Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 45, Number 1, 1977 by Utah Historical Society

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UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY EDITORIAL STAFF MELVIN T. SMITH, Editor

STANFORD J. LAYTON, Managing Editor MIRIAM B. MURPHY, Assistant Editor

ADVISORY BOARD OF EDITORS THOMAS G. ALEXANDER, Provo, 1977

MRS. INEZ S. COOPER, Cedar City, 1978 S. GEORGE ELLSWORTH, Logan, 1978 GLEN M. LEONARD, Bountiful, 1979

DAVID E. MILLER, Salt Lake City, 1979 LAMAR PETERSEN, Salt Lake City, 1977 RICHARD W. SADLER, Ogden, 1979

HAROLD SCHINDLER, Salt Lake City, 1978 JEROME STOFFEL, Logan, 1977

Utah Historical Quarterly was established in 1928 to publish articles, documents, and reviews contributing to knowledge of Utah's history. The Quarterly is published by the Utah State Historical Society, 603 East South Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah 84102. Phone (801) 533-5755. Members of the Society receive the Quarterly and the bimonthly Newsletter upon payment of the annual dues; for details see inside back cover. Single copies, $2.00. Materials for publication should be submitted in duplicate accompanied by return postage and should be typed double-spaced with footnotes at the end. Additional information on requirements is available from the managing editor. The Society assumes no responsibility for statements of fact or opinion by contributors. The Quarterly is indexed in Book Review Index to Social Science Periodicals, America: History and Life, and Abstracts of Popular Culture. Second class postage is paid at Salt Lake City, Utah. ISSN 0042-143X

HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Contents WINTER 1 9 7 7 / V O L U M E 45 / NUMBER 1

IN THIS ISSUE

A REVIEW OF MORMON SETTLEMENT LITERATURE

L. WAHLQUIST

GENE A. SESSIONS and STEPHEN W. STATHIS

P. MACKINNON

F. D E M I L L E

KRISTEN SMART ROGERS

L. MAY

WAYNE

THE MORMON INVASION OF RUSSIAN AMERICA: DYNAMICS OF A POTENT MYTH THE GAP IN THE BUCHANAN REVIVAL: THE UTAH EXPEDITION OF 1857-58

WILLIAM

SHONESBURG: THE TOWN NOBODY KNOWS WILLIAM HENRY SMART: UINTA BASIN PIONEER LEADER

JANICE

THE MAKING OF SAINTS: THE MORMON TOWN AS A SETTING FOR THE STUDY OF CULTURAL CHANGE

DEAN

BOOK REVIEWS

BOOK NOTICES

102

THE COVER When photographer Andrew J. Russell came west in 1868-69, following the progress of the Union Pacific Railroad, he brought with him the cumbersome apparatus for wetplate photography. Fortunately for Utah historians, Russell photographed many scenes other than the railroad, such as the "old saw mill Parleys Park" depicted on the cover. The entire glass plate has been printed on this occasion to show this nineteenth-century medium to its full advantage as both art and historic object.

E R N E S T L. W I L K I N S O N , LEONARD J. ARRINGTON, and B R U C E C. H A F E N , eds.

BrigJiam Young University: The First One Hundred Years . FREDERICK S. CLAUDIA

BUCHANAN

309

POLLY STEWART D E E M E R

312

L. B U S H M A N , ed. Mormon

Women

in Early Utali

Sisters:

LEONARD J. ARRINGTON, FERAMORZ Y.

F O X , and D E A N L . M A Y .

Building

the City of God: Community Cooperation among the Mormons

and SNOW

313

TOOLE

315

BRINGHURST

315

MARCELLUS

Books reviewed

L. T H A N E , J R . , ed. A Governor's Wife on the Mining Frontier: The Letters of Mary Edgerton from Montana, 1863-1865 . . K. R o s s

JAMES

W. S H E R M A N SAVAGE. Blacks

in the West JOE

. . . .

B. F R A N T Z . Aspects of the American West: Three Essays . . . .

NEWELL

DENNIS

SHOCKLEY

317

In this issue Recent scholarship, reflecting a variety of approaches and methods, has greatly expanded our knowledge of early Utah settlement patterns. No longer can the dynamics of this complex phenomenon be comfortably dismissed by the simplistic assertion that "the desert was made to blossom as a rose." For a, long generation now, the successes, failures, and unique processes of these settlement efforts have commanded the attention of historians, geographers, sociologists, economists, and no\,lists. From this fascination has come a great deal of literature, much of it good but not particularly well known beyond a small circle of scholars. It is appropriate that this issue, devoted to the topic of settlement, open with a selective review of these studies. From the bibliographic the focus changes to specific events, places, and personalities. Rumors of Mormon settlement in Alaska and perplexing lacunae in the historiography of the Mormon W a r are among the topics explored. Informative and analytical, these two articles are vivid reminders that questions of settlement entered international as well as national political arenas with results interesting, unforeseen, and ongoing. T h e next two pieces â&#x20AC;&#x201D; one a nostalgic glance at a promising community victimized by the capricious Rio Virgin, the other a revealing biographical sketch of a Uinta Basin booster â&#x20AC;&#x201D; will not only suggest the variety of settlement experiences in Utah but will also' illustrate the essential point that the formula for successful settlement has been at once delicate and complex. T h e final article, focusing on method, presents some intriguing suggestions for future directions in local demographic studies. It challenges the reader to remember always that the discipline of history is as dependent on the talent for asking questions as on the ability to answer them.

A Review of Mormon Settlement Literature BY W A Y N E L.

WAHLQJUIST

This George Edward Anderson photograph taken near Crystal Springs in June 1925 shows the town of Manti in the distance. Utah State Historical Society collections.

the attention of scholars from various fields, including history, sociology, and geography, partly because of the uniqueness and controversial nature of Mormon society, partly J V L O R M O N S E T T L E M E N T H A S ATTRACTED

Dr. Wahlquist is associate professor of geography at Weber State College.

Mormon Settlement Literature

because Mormons dominated a large section of western America, and partly because of the Mormon penchant for keeping journals that provide an amazing amount of primary source material. Historians, particularly, have been interested in the establishment of a Mormon empire in the Great Basin. In the 130 years of Mormon settlement in the West, a wealth of general and specialized studies has been produced. A review of some of this literature seems timely. GENERAL HISTORICAL WORKS

A number of general histories contain useful background material for anyone looking at Mormon settlement. The books discussed here are intended to be indicative of the types of studies available rather than an exhaustive listing, although an effort has been made to include major contributions. A detailed economic history of Mormon settlement in the Great Basin is provided by Arlington's Great Basin Kingdom? As one would expect from an economic historian, he traces the close relationship of economic development to the total social, religious, and political conditions of the time. Economic determinism, although never labeled as such, is a recurring theme. Many of the political, social, and even religious programs of the church he interprets as responses to economic forces. The retrenchment program, for example, developed in response to the coming of the railroad to shore up the influence and control of the church against the anticipated intrusion of Gentiles. Desert Saints, written by a prominent sociologist, is considered by some historians to be the best single volume on Mormon history.2 Although very general in coverage, it offers insights into the workings of Mormon society. An early work, Bancroft's History of Utah, is one in a series of historical volumes from that historian's prolific pen.3 Published in 1890, it was written when anti-Mormon sentiment was strong. Nevertheless, it is remarkably objective. His primary sources are manuscripts provided by the LDS church, but he balances these with statements of federal officials and anti-Mormon writers when facts are disputed. He gives his own 1 Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958).. T h e author's hundred pages of notes and bibliography serve as an excellent guide to further research. 2 Nels Anderson, Desert Saints: Chicago Press, 1942.) 3

The Mormon

Frontier

in Utah

H u b e r t Howe Bancroft, History of Utah (San Francisco, 1890).

(Chicago: University of

Utah Historical Quarterly

interpretation of the significance of polygamy and other controversial issues in the political and economic history of Utah. The Founding of an Empire is a well-written account of the Mormon exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois, and the selection of the Great Basin as the place of refuge.4 It also covers early frontier colonization. Klaus J. Hansen's meticulous research in Quest for Empire provides the most complete study of the political kingdom of God in Mormon history.5 Because of persecution from an antagonistic Gentile world, the organization of the political kingdom of God and its ruling body, the Council of Fifty, was shrouded in secrecy. The general church membership was ignorant of the council's functions and even of its existence. Hansen has pieced together from widely scattered primary sources a remarkable history of this little-known body of men. His treatment is interpretive, but it is well documented from both Mormon and antiMormon sources. Hansen sees the Council of Fifty as the real controlling power in political and other temporal affairs of the Mormon empire. Particularly enlightening is the author's discussion of the planning and negotiations prior to and in preparation for the exodus from Illinois. Texas, California, Oregon, and the Great Basin were all carefully considered as destinations. In the case of Texas, negotiations centered on the establishment of a Mormon buffer state between Texas and Mexico, and a diplomat was dispatched to France to determine her attitude toward such a proposal. According to Hansen, it was the existence of this shadow government in Utah that really lay at the root of the MormonGentile conflict that lasted a half-century. Polygamy was the rallying point for anti-Mormon sentiment and wras thus used as an effective weapon against this secret political kingdom controlled by the Mormon hierarchy. Brigham Young the Colonizer provides the best history to date of the colonizing activity directed by Brigham Young, although the Mormon bias of the author shows through consistently in this laudatory account.6 It includes the early settlement of virtually all of the significant valleys in the Great Basin. Individual settlements are covered very lightly, but one can find a brief account of the individuals involved and the dates * Leland H. Creer, The Founding of an Empire: The Exploration Utah, 1776-1856 (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1947). This work has been U t a h history textbook. 5 Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom of God and the Council History (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1967). 6 Milton R. Hunter, Brigham Young the Colonizer (Salt Lake City: 1940).

and Colonization of used frequently as a of Fifty in

Mormon

Deseret News Press,

Mormon

Settlement

Literature

when most settlements were founded. Colonization continued after Brigh a m Young's death in 1877, but those colonies are beyond the scope of the study. A list of 358 colonies is included at the end of the book with the dates of settlement and a rather crude small-scale m a p showing the approximate locations. Although a discussion of land policies is included, there is no attempt to measure, classify, or m a p agricultural land utilized in any of the colonies. T h e methods of distributing land and the problems of obtaining title receive only general treatment. T h e Mormon system of cooperative enterprise is examined in Prelude to the Kingdom.7 This study provides good coverage of the Perpetual Emigrating Fund and M o r m o n emigration. T h e author, for many years a history professor at Brigham Young University, traces the cooperative spirit of the pioneer era to its present manifestation in the Mormon welfare system. Among the Mormons is a collection of statements from contemporary observers that gives a balanced glimpse of the mood and flavor of early Mormon history. 8 Each skillfully chosen selection is prefaced with a sketch of the conditions that existed at the time and a thumbnail biography of the observer. T h e selections represent general impressions of Mormons and their settlements rather than descriptions of individual colonies. A well written sociological analysis of Mormon villages and rural U t a h society is found in The Mormon Village? T h e author completed a thesis in 1923 and a dissertation in 1929 at the University of Wisconsin on aspects of M o r m o n villages and in 1950 revisited two of the villages he first studied in 1923. Nelson's quarter-century of interest in Mormon villages culminated in this book. Spatial relations are not ignored, but the prime focus is on social behavior. It is no doubt a penetrating look at social structure in the twentieth-century Mormon village and is useful in measuring the impact of the depression and World W a r I I on rural America. Yet, Nelson assumes a uniformity in town plats that did not exist, and one wonders if there was not more cultural diversity from village to village than he recognized. It appears that Nelson's study, while valuable, is far from being the definitive work some have labeled it. T h e

T Gustive O. Larson, Prelude to the Kingdom: Mormon Desert Conquest, A Chapter American Cooperative Experience (Francetown, N . H . : Marshall Jones Company, 1947). 8 William Mulder and A. Russell Mortensen, eds., Among the Mormons: counts by Contemporary Observers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958). 9 Lowry Nelson, The Mormon Village: A Pattern (Salt Lake City: University of U t a h Press, 1952).

and Technique

of Land

Historic

in Ac-

Settlement

Utah Historical Quarterly

book has helped to perpetuate some misconceptions that need to be tested by careful field work. B. H. Roberts provides an excellent, detailed account of historical events compiled from church sources.10 An LDS General Authority and church historian, Roberts was a prominent spokesman for the church in both civic and religious affairs. As one might expect, the Mormon bias of the author is apparent; but, despite this, his work is a remarkably complete and objective record containing much information that is not found elsewhere. STUDIES OF MORMON SETTLEMENT

Although aspects of Mormon settlement have been the object of numerous master's theses and doctoral dissertations, the subject has not been investigated as thoroughly as a bibliographic survey would seem to indicate. Graduate researchers exhibit a strong tendency to get sidetracked from the specific topics indicated by the titles of their research projects to a general history of Mormonism in Utah. Consequently, much research is repetitive and contributes little that is actually new to the basic analysis of Mormon settlement. Therefore, a review of some of the studies that have dealt with Mormon occupancy of the land might serve as a useful guide to future research. Of necessity the review must be selective. In her generalized history of Mormon colonization, Ila Dastrup emphasized the organization and cooperative spirit of Mormon colonies as opposed to the individualism characteristic of most pioneer settlements.11 Some information about specific settlements is included but usually only a paragraph or two. The author assumes a uniformity in Mormon colonization that may not have existed. She states, for example, that outside of new settlements, land was surveyed into five-acre lots, then other irrigated land was distributed according to the needs of the population. Blocks of eight lots were uniform with each lot containing about one and a quarter acres each. Recent studies have shown that such uniformity did not exist. A recently published book on the United Order gives a comprehensive and discerning look at Mormon communalism.12 The research, by 10 A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Century 1, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1930). 11 " M o r m o n Colonization, a Type in the Westward Movement" (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1931). 12 Leonard J. Arrington, Feramorz Y. Fox, and Dean L. May, Building the City of God: Community and Cooperation Among the Mormons (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1976).

Mormon Settlement Literature

three authors, spans a forty-year period, yet the text has a unity in style and content that makes it highly readable. It traces the major attempts at communal living from the Law of Consecration initiated by Joseph Smith in Ohio and Missouri to the Consecration Deeds of the mid-1850s and the churchwide attempt to establish United Orders in the early 1870s under the direction of Brigham Young. The modern welfare plan is the twentieth-century manifestation of the same communal spirit. The book provides more than a descriptive account of Mormon communalism in its various forms; it offers a penetrating analysis of social, economic, and religious factors that contributed to these remarkable innovations in socioeconomic experimentation and their ultimate failure. The spirit of community effort carried beyond the actual communal experiments to cooperative construction of irrigation systems; enclosure of farmlands within one "big field"; and construction of transportation systems, manufacturing enterprises, and retail establishments that did not require the relinquishment of private property rights. Anyone investigating Mormon settlement should examine this book. Building the City of God focuses on the ideas and attitudes of Mormon leaders and the difficulties they experienced in getting their ideas accepted by the people and translated into action. The authors emphasize the continuance of the cooperative theme throughout Mormon history. Yet, it seems to this reviewer that the repeated failure of communitarianism among Mormons stands as mute testimony that individualism is the stronger force. The modern welfare plan has succeeded because it strikes a balance between communalism and individualism. It permits the individual to fulfill the scriptural dictum that one should love his neighbor as exemplified in the parable of the Good Samaritan but allows him the freedom to shape his own economic destiny. Joel E. Ricks in his brief, but well written, thesis traces the legal history of land distribution in Utah. 13 He reviews the legislative acts of Utah Territory and of Congress that affected land distribution in Utah, including treaties with various Indian tribes that added land to the public domain in Utah. This study will serve as a useful guide to legislative action for anyone interested in the disposal of public land in Utah. Professor Ricks's dissertation is a general history of Mormon colonization compiled from primary sources.14 He explores the procedures 13

" T h e Early L a n d System of U t a h , 1847-1870" (M.A. thesis, University of Chicago,

1920). M

"Forms a n d Methods of Early Mormon Settlement in U t a h and Surrounding Regions, 1847 to 1877" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1930). This dissertation was published by U t a h State University Press in 1964.

Utah Historical

Quarterly

followed in establishing colonies and describes their developmental stages by examining selected colonies in detail — Salt Lake City being the first settlement reviewed at length. He discusses the governmental structure; the method of distributing land; the construction of roads, canals, and defense installations; the development of industry; and population growth. The work contains a very brief history of settlement elsewhere in the Mormon Core, but most attention is given to settlements in southern Utah, Arizona, California, and Cache VTalley, Utah. Ricks emphasizes the planning and control Brigham Young exerted in these colonization efforts. The Saints faithfully responded to Young's call to settle new regions and thus helped to fulfill his dreams of empire. Although Ricks is not as laudatory as Milton Hunter, his conception of Young as the great planner and manipulator is much the same. Religious imperialism was the motivational drive behind Mormon colonization efforts. H e does mention that some people were attracted to new settlements because of available land in contrast to the overcrowding that existed in the Salt Lake vicinity. The possibility of this as a major motivational force for colonization, however, is not explored. Ricks definitely considers it incidental to Mormon expansionism. Ricks was a friend of Frederick Jackson Turner, but his polished account of Mormon colonization is the very antithesis of the Turner thesis. H e describes how carefully planned, directed, cooperative ventures in colonization succeeded in the face of isolation and a harsh physical environment. Rather than rugged individualism, cooperation was the key to survival. Instead of independent ideas and innovation, the Mormon frontier produced deference to authority and uniformity in culture. Urbanization occurred simultaneously with agricultural development, not as the end product of a multi-stage sequential process. Charles S. Peterson's study of Mormon colonization on the Little Colorado is exhaustive, insightful, and immensely readable. 15 The author, an associate professor of history at Utah State University, has done a thorough job of sifting through diaries, journals, letters, church records, and secondary sources. Particularly illuminating is his discussion of the role church institutions — mission calls, United Order, polygamy, cooperative mercantile institutions, etc. — played in Mormon expansions in Arizona. Although the emphasis is on church-directed and churchsupervised settlement, he does not ignore individualism. In fact, he identifies individualism as a potent force, sometimes latent, sometimes 15

Take Up Your Mission: Mormon Colonization (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1973).

along the Little

Colorado,

1870—1900

Mormon Settlement Literature

dominant, in shaping and/or altering the internal nature and characteristics of these settlements. This is an invaluable source for any study dealing with Mormon settlement. Although geographers have not concerned themselves with the Mormon region to the extent that other social scientists have, several dissertations and theses have treated the subject. Charles Langoon White's work, for example, is a perceptive regional study of the characteristics, accomplishments, and problems of agriculture in the Salt Lake oasis.16 Of particular interest is the discussion of the development of wetlands in the older lowland farms after irrigation was brought to the higher bench lands. In at least one case, the village itself was moved several miles to higher, better-drained land. The author discusses at length the problems of adjusting twentieth-century agricultural methods to the small farms and agricultural villages that are a legacy of the pioneer era, and he also examines the types of crops, marketing procedures, and methods of production that were current When the study was done. As one would expect from a student of Carl Sauer in the early 1930s, Joseph E. Spencer's study emphasizes the natural and cultural landscape.17 The first half of the dissertation presents background material, including a thorough discussion of the physical setting: basic geology, physiography, hydrology, climate, and vegetation. One chapter is also devoted to the Indian landscape. However, since there were few Indians, their impact on the landscape was slight. Indian history, economy, and social characteristics are covered in a general way. Prior to the coming of the Mormons there had already been some acculturation, since the Indians were raising wheat and a few of them knew some Spanish. The background chapter on Mormon colonization traces pioneer history and describes beliefs and practices that led to colonization in the Middle Virgin River country. Most of the information is available in greater detail in other sources that have already been reviewed. The last half of Spencer's dissertation is devoted to Mormon settlement along the Middle Virgin River Valley and its tributaries. Much attention is given to the morphology of settlements: town plats, house types, roads, crops, ownership patterns, etc. These items comprised the cultural landscape. M " T h e Agricultural Geography of the Salt Lake Oasis, 1925" (Ph.D. diss., Clark University, 1925) was printed in Denison University Bulletin, Journal of the Scientific Laboratories (September 1925), pp. 117-283. " " T h e Middle Virgin River Valley, U t a h : A Study in Culture Growth and C h a n g e " (Ph.D. diss., University of California, 1936).

Utah Historical Quarterly

The Mormon system of land division and the adjustments made to the government rectangular land survey are discussed in a general way. Patterns of claimed land are shown for a few sample villages, but Spencer makes no attempt to map in detail the actual farmed land. He states that the common practice of gaining legal title to the land was to have "trustees" file for homestead entries in behalf of several owners of small acreages. The trustee, in turn, deeded the land to its rightful owner after receiving the patent for it. Although this system has been mentioned by several writers, no one (including Spencer) has ever attempted to determine how common this practice was. It would be interesting to find out what proportion of the land and what proportion of land titles were granted under this system. Spencer also looks at economic conditions and trends as they have affected growth and decline of population. He concludes that with the opening of national highways, and the entry of Utah's Dixie into the full force of economic competition with other areas, that disruption of the church-oriented society took place. The Mormon church was losing its control, though not its influence, in Dixie. William E. Coffman's dissertation is typical of the good quality regional studies in geography in the 1930s and 1940s.18 It examines the physical setting, i.e., basic physiography, soils, climate, vegetation, the cultural setting, and economic development. Some attention is given to settlement and the development of irrigation practices, but these topics are treated in a general way and are peripheral to the main focus of the study, which is the current geography of the valley. The author points out that the first settlements were near streams. The usual procedure was to first build a fort with cottonwood logs where the earliest settlers lived while the fields were brought under cultivation. A town was plotted and surveyed nearby. Then when each settler received his town allotment he proceeded to build his individual home. Irrigation canals were small at first and served only easily irrigated land close to streams. Then, as the population increased, additional canals were built, taking their water out farther upstream so that they could irrigate higher and higher ground. This resulted in a series of parallel canals owned by different companies. Coffman does not attempt to map the location of these canals nor the land that was brought under cultivation. His is not a study focused on a particular problem; rather, 18

1944).

" T h e Geography of the U t a h Valley Crescent" (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University,

Mormon Settlement Literature

it gives a broad descriptive analysis of the physical and cultural elements that comprised the geography of Utah Valley in 1940. A high quality, two-volume exposition by Elbert E. Miller makes a major contribution to the identification and description of the agricultural problems, limitations, practices, and potentials of Cache Valley.19 He gears it to contemporary culture but discusses quite thoroughly the historical background of such items as irrigation and drainage. A map of irrigation canals in 1869 is included as well as a table of potential irrigation projects that could be useful in the future. Of particular interest is the chapter on the history of agricultural settlement. Of necessity a generalized account, it does record several phases in the development of agriculture and the establishment of agricultural communities. Grasshopper plagues, freezing winters, and Indian raids took heavy tolls on crops and livestock in the early period. One of the main contributions of the study is the numerous distribution maps of agricultural crops and livestock. Miller examines the development and potentials of the major crops that were then grown and considers the potential for a few crops that were then insignificant. He feels that Cache Valley was a mature agriculture region that had approached its maximum production except for new potential irrigation districts. A monograph by Charles M. Chestnutwood looks at the historical development of Brigham City, Utah, as an urban community.20 A descriptive study, much of it consists of a narrative of early Brigham City history. Other sections survey land use and urban functions of the contemporary city. He emphasizes the dominant role early Mormon leaders, notably Lorenzo Snow, played in the spatial organizational pattern and development of the community. John H. Baum briefly analyzes, in his work, one hundred Mormon settlements to determine patterns of land occupancy; physical characteristics that determined sites for towns; types of surveys used; and relationships between forts and "lay-out patterns." 21 Broad in scope, the study lacks somewhat in depth. Baum looks for general patterns rather than for a thorough understanding of particular settlements. This rather superficial coverage results in several errors. One table identifies those ?9 "Agricultural Geography of Cache Valley, U t a h - I d a h o " (Ph.D. thesis, University of Washington, 1951). 20 " A n Historical Approach to the U r b a n Geography of Brigham City" (M.S. thesis University of U t a h , 1950). 21 "Geographical Characteristics of Early Mormon Settlements" (M.S. thesis, Brigham Young University 1967).

Utah Historical Quarterly

settlements that had a fort or protective wall and indicates the kind of construction used. Several settlements in the Mormon Core are shown as not having either a wall or fort, when in fact they did: Draper, West Jordan, North Ogden, Uintah, and Lynne (earlier called Bingham's Fort.) Furthermore, the table does not indicate when the settlements were founded. One would conclude from the table that protective walls or forts were the exception rather than the rule. This is certainly not true for the early settlements. Most settlements established before 1856 had either a wall around the village or a fort, whereas settlements established after 1870 rarely had them unless they were located deep in Indian country. Baum classifies each settlement site as an alluvial fan, delta, lake plain, or river bottom. He concludes that 60 of the 100 settlements were located on alluvial fans, 24 on deltas, and only 16 on river bottoms or lake plains. The fans and deltas apparently were preferred by Mormon settlers because of better drainage and freedom from floods. Lake plains were often marshy and alkaline. The problem with such a classification lies in the difficulty of accurately identifying each landform type. Ogden, for example, is listed as a delta settlement, when in reality it was built on the flood plain where the Ogden and Weber rivers have cut down through the delta. Uintah is also listed as a delta settlement, yet it was built on the Weber flood plain approximately three hundred feet below the delta surface. Since, along the Wasatch oasis, deltas often grade imperceptibly into alluvial fans and river flood plains grade imperceptibly into lake plains, generalizations based on such a classification, without careful checking in the field, are of doubtful validity. One of the valuable items in Baum's study is the analysis of town plats. Again, the author compiles information into tables showing the size of blocks, width of streets, number of lots in a block, size of lots, and shape of blocks. Assuming that the tables are accurate, the one hundred settlements exhibit a surprising variety in these characteristics, Lot size varies from .5 to 2.0 acres; the number of lots in a block varies from 4 to 14; and streets vary in width from 50 to 132.99 feet. If, as has often been stated, all Mormon settlements were patterned after Salt Lake City, this table shows that early surveyors were not adept at following the plan. In 1970 Richard V. Francaviglia completed a provocative study of the Mormon landscape.22 He points out that geographers as a rule have 22 " T h e Mormon L a n d s c a p e : Existence, Creation, a n d Perception of a Unique Image in the American West" (Ph.D. diss., University of Oregon, 1970).

Mormon Settlement Literature

closed their eyes to the cultural landscape. He quotes George Perkins Marsh: "sight is a faculty; seeing an art." With this in mind, Francaviglia spent six months in the field investigating Mormon and nonMormon settlements in the Intermountain region, covering some thirteen thousand miles. His goal was to determine: 1) if there really was a distinctive Mormon landscape; 2) how the elements of the landscape vary in time and space; 3) the primary factors creating the landscape; 4) how writers and artists have portrayed that landscape; and 5) if the Mormons themselves are aware of any difference between Mormon and nonMormon landscapes. The author chooses several landscape features as indices for measuring the Mormon landscape, including the following: wide streets (over sixty-five feet), roadside irrigation ditches, NSEW grid pattern towns, trees lining the streets, open fields surrounding the town, cattle and sheep on the same pasture, lombardy poplars in the landscape, "inside-out" granaries (the wall boards are on the inside of the stud wall), hay derricks, central-hall-plan houses, high percentage of brick houses, high percentage of red and light brown houses, and Mormon fences (unpainted fence composed of upright boards attached to crosspoles). According to Francaviglia, any or all of these features comprise an important part of the visual landscape and form a measure of the extent of Mormon influence in the village. Forty-two towns or villages were selected to measure these visual characteristics. Maps were made for each of the features listed above. Those settlements where a particular characteristic is present are shown as solid circles, and those without that characteristic are shown as clear circles. The Mormon settlements consistently appear as solid circles, whereas the non-Mormon settlements quite consistently appear as clear circles. However, no indication is given of how frequently the characteristic in question appears in those villages shown as solid circles. Is the item common or merely present? If the circle is clear, does it mean that the item in question is totally absent or merely less common than in villages shown as solid circles? The reader is left to speculate. On the map of population characteristics, twenty-six settlements are shown as Mormon, five as part-Mormon, and eleven as non-Mormon or Gentile. Again, nothing on the map or in the text indicates what percentage of the total population constitutes a Mormon or Gentile town. Since it is highly unlikely that any settlement is 100 percent Mormon or 100 percent non-Mormon, the reader wonders exactly what constitutes a Mormon,

Utah Historical Quarterly

part-Mormon, or non-Mormon town. Without more explicit information, the whole series of maps is of doubtful value. Francaviglia identifies three zones within the Mormon culture region that display varying intensities of these visual characteristics of the Mormon landscape. The "nucleus" comprises the zone of settlements stretching from Cache Valley in the north to St. George in the south and corresponds quite closely with Donald W. Meinig's map of contiguous colonizations. Many of the visual features mentioned above are present in this region. The "orb" surrounds the "nucleus" and is visually less Mormon than the "nucleus," but it still contains some of the visual features. The "fringe" surrounds the "orb" and extends fingerlike into Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. The "fringe" contains a few of the Mormon visual characteristics such as a hay derrick or unpainted barn, but they are not common features, Francaviglia traces the origin and evolution of these visual characteristics and their process of diffusion. He restates what many others have said: that Brigham Young directed, instructed, and controlled the population. Consequently, if Young told the people to build solid houses, it became a matter of eternal salvation to build with rock or brick, which accounts for the high number of brick homes in Mormon settlements. This reviewer is highly skeptical of such a conclusion. No evidence has been found in diaries of early pioneers that indicates people chose their building material because of any religious compulsion or even direct instruction or suggestion of Brigham Young. For the most part, they chose the building material that was most readily available to them. Further, some of the features such as unpainted fences and barns may reflect rural poverty rather than cultural preference. They are certainly common features in the rural South. One also wonders if comparing eleven Gentile settlements, twenty-six Mormon, and five part-Mormon settlements constitutes a valid sample. Nevertheless, Francaviglia is undoubtedly a perceptive observer. His description of Cannonville, the typical Mormon settlement, is vivid and meaningful. He has seen more than most observers. If seeing is an art, he is an artist. Whether he is an impressionist or a realist remains to be proven. Utilizing diaries, letters, and contemporary publications, Richard H. Jackson reconstructs the general perception of the environment by most Mormon pioneers,23 The author begins with the perception of the 23 "Myth and Reality: Environmental Perceptions of the Mormons, 1840-1865, An Historical Geosophy" (Ph.D. diss., Clark University, 1970).

Mormon Settlement Literature

East and Midwest areas where the Mormons first accumulated in large numbers. One general theory Jackson subscribes to is that men rationalize when forming opinions about their environment, emphasizing the favorable aspects and ignoring the undesirable ones. When Missouri was the gathering point for Mormon converts, the diaries, letters, and public statements were highly favorable, but after the Mormons had migrated to Utah they remembered many of Missouri's undesirable characteristics such as hot, humid days and the prevalence of fever and malaria. Jackson pays particular attention to the Mormons' perception of the landscape on their long trek from the Missouri River to the Great Basin. He thinks this journey gradually conditioned Mormon pioneers to arid conditions. When they reached the Salt Lake Valley, contrary to the popular myth â&#x20AC;&#x201D; accepted and frequently repeated by many historians â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that, the Mormons viewed the Salt Lake Valley as a desolate desert, supporting only crickets and a few half-starved Indians, these first pioneers were generally pleased with their new home. One diarist reacted very negatively to the valley, and her reaction has been repeated again and again in popular histories and has helped to implant an idea that is unsupported by the evidence. A thorough study of many diaries and letters shows the opposite to be true. The pioneers made frequent references to rich soil, healthy climate, and abundant resources. Jackson does not examine in detail any particular aspect of the environment; rather, he focuses his attention on favorable or unfavorable reactions to the total environment, particularly the barren desert myth that has been exaggerated over the years. A random sampling of students at the Brigham Young University and other local residents revealed that the overwhelming majority believed the valley to have been a barren, desertlike area. Jackson maintains that this belief is partly due to the fact that people are comparing the valley with the presently unsettled areas of Utah, which are largely barren. Such a comparison ignores the fact that the good lands so readily put into farms by the pioneers never did look like the barren areas of present-day Utah. Jackson claims that Brigham Young's perception of the environment, which was strongly influenced by the reports of Lansford W. Hastings, led to some misconceptions that greatly affected colonization activities. Young apparently thought that land to the north of Salt Lake Valley was too cold to support colonies. Colonization was directed to the south not only because of Mormon desire to gain a route to the sea, but in large measure because of Young's misconceptions about the northern valleys.

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In addition, some colonies were established in submarginal locations and settlers were admonished to stay and make a go of it. Jackson maintains that part of the reason for the myth about the barrenness of the Salt Lake Valley was the desire of church leaders to prove that settlers could make these desert areas blossom as the first settlers had done in the Salt Lake Valley. In summary, Jackson's study provides insight into the way early Mormon pioneers viewed their environment and the impact that Brigham Young's perception of the environment played in directing colonization to the south rather than to the north. The study does not look into colonization itself, nor does Jackson concern himself with the settlement process. Before completing this critique of settlement literature, the author would like to review his own study of Mormon settlement.24 This review will identify the methods, objectives, and major conclusions of the study rather than attempt to assess its worth. Earlier works dealing with Mormon settlement focused primarily on the frontier rather than the Mormon Core â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the zone of contiguous settlement along the Wasatch Front. The frontier best reflected the expansionist or imperialistic aims of Mormon leaders and provided the best examples of church direction, control, and planning as well as individual loyalty, hardship, and heroism. Consequently, the author directed his efforts toward a geographical appraisal of settlement processes in the Core, focusing upon the activities and characteristics of the common settler rather than the aims or attitudes of Mormon leaders. He relied heavily on manuscript United States Census schedules, county deed records, and private journals and diaries 24 Wayne L. Wahlquist, "Settlement Processes in the M o r m o n Core Area, 1847-1890" ( P h . D . diss., University of Nebraska, 1974). A condensation of p a r t of this study was published as p a r t 1 in the m o n o g r a p h Historical Settlement and Population Patterns along the Wasatch Front published by die Wasatch F r o n t Regional Council in 1976. Space does not permit an individual review of all related studies. Additional authors who have dealt with M o r m o n settlement directly or indirectly include: Joseph A. Geddes, Farm Versus Village Living in Utah, Plain City â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Type "A" Village, Bulletins 249 a n d 269, U t a h Agricultural Experiment Station ( L o g a n : U t a h State Agricultural College, 1934 and 1 9 3 6 ) ; Charles E. Cummings, " T h e M o r m o n System of Colonization" (M.A. thesis, University of O k l a h o m a , 1946) ; P.A.M. Taylor and L e o n a r d J. Arrington, "Religion a n d Planning in the F a r West: T h e First Generation of M o r m o n s in U t a h , " Economic History Review 2 (1958) : 7 1 - 8 6 ; H . Bowman Hawks a n d O s m o n d L. Harline, The Salt Lake Area: Land of Contrasts, International Geographical U n i o n , (Salt Lake City: D e p a r t m e n t of Geography, University of U t a h , 1960) ; Paul T. Johnson, " A n Analysis of the Spread of the C h u r c h of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints from Salt Lake City, U t a h , Utilizing a Diffusion M o d e l " ( P h . D . diss., State University of Iowa, 1966) ; Steven W. Schuster. " T h e Evolution of M o r m o n City Planning and Salt Lake City" (Master's thesis, University of U t a h , 1967) ; D e a n R. Hodson, " T h e Origin of NonM o r m o n Settlements in U t a h : 1 8 4 7 - 1 8 9 6 " ( P h . D . diss., Michigan State University, 1 9 7 1 ) ; L y n n A. Rosenvall, " M o r m o n Settlement P a t t e r n s : 1 8 4 0 - 1 9 0 0 " ( P h . D . diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1972) ; Melvin T. Smith, " T h e Colorado River: Its History in the Lower Canyons A r e a " ( P h . D . diss., Brigham Young University, 1972).

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for his primary sources of information. His purpose was to identify and analyze the succession of events and developmental stages in man's occupancy of the land and the causative forces that produced them. A statistical nearest neighbor analysis of settlement pattern in 1850 and 1890 revealed that a uniform, closely spaced, linear pattern of settlements soon emerged and persisted throughout the colonization period. Travel distance and availability of water seemed to be the primary factors responsible for the distribution pattern. A pyramidal structure of settlement size and urban functions developed somewhat akin to Christaller's hypothetical pattern. T h e expansion northward from Salt Lake City into Davis and Weber counties did not occur in accordance with a general colonization scheme but rather as nondirected settlements founded by individuals acting on their own. In contrast, the first settlements in Utah County were begun by groups that were sanctioned, if not directed, by the Mormon hierarchy. Consequently, dispersed farmsteads were common in Davis and Weber counties, whereas villages were the rule in Utah County. A random survey of journals indicated that very few (approximately 10 percent) of those families settling in the Core received any direction from church officials in selecting their locale. Furthermore, the majority of those families who moved from the Core to some frontier community did so as a matter of personal choice rather than in response to a church "call." Apparently, individualism was a more potent force than has generally been recognized. Mobility was surprisingly high. A survey of names on the census records for three selected communities â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Brigham Cn y, Kaysville, and Springville â&#x20AC;&#x201D; revealed a very high turnover. Less than one-third of the names on the agricultural schedules recur on each succeeding census between 1860 and 1880. More than two-thirds of the farmers in each community moved away or died each decade. The frequency of individual choice in selecting the home community and lack of persistence stand in sharp contrast to the commonly held notion that families were told where to settle by LDS church leaders and that people stayed and made a go of it no matter how tough things became. As with most migrations, the Mormon migration to the Great Basin was selective. Most of those who came were young people, and in contrast to most frontiers included as many women as men. T h e birthrate was high. T h e 1855 bishop's report revealed that 32 percent of the population was under eight years of age. T h e majority of the adult population was foreign-born, most of them from the British Isles. Scandi-

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navians were also found in large numbers and comprised the majority of the adult population in the Brigham City area. T h e first distribution of land in Salt Lake City was under the auspices of church officials; but, following organization of a territorial government, the responsibility for land surveys was given to the territorial surveyor-general, and county recorders were appointed to record land transactions in each county. Farms were very small â&#x20AC;&#x201D; generally five to twenty acres. T h e pattern of small farms resulted from several factors: 1) church authorities advocated small farms in order to accommodate a steady flow of new settlers; 2) village settlement encouraged small farms that allowed dwellers relatively easy access near the village rather than larger farms at greater distances; 3) the cost of fences and irrigation canals was prohibitive for individual farmers if they attempted to farm large tracts of land, an additional incentive to enclosing farmlands within one big field fenced and maintained by communal efforts. I n those areas where dispersed farmsteads were the rule, farm size was larger. T h e small farms of the 1850s and 1860s proved uneconomic, and farm size increased substantially after 1870. Federally recognized land titles h a d to await the establishment of the Government L a n d Office in 1869. Legal title to individual land holdings near the center of the community was acquired first, usually by cash entry, warrant, or scrip patents. Farms more distant from the community were acquired later â&#x20AC;&#x201D; often by homesteading. This study concludes that the M o r m o n Core was not a monolithic region of uniform culture where individual decisions awaited direction from and deferred to ecclesiastical authority. It was an area of significant diversity. Individualism was not submerged in communalism. Although much has been accomplished in the study of Mormon settlement, much remains to be done. In approaching the task, it would be well to remember this perceptive observation: Until very recently, American social history was written from the perspective of the dominant culture. It dealt with elites rather than common people. With institutions rather than social processes, with attitudes rather than experiences. Large segments of the population were ignored or frequently subjected to stereotyping. 25

T h a t charge is true of much that has been written about Mormon history. There is a definite need for further research that is nonelitest in its approach. O n e should not assume that Mormon rhetoric was automatically 25 T a m a r a K. Hareven, ed., Anonymous Hall, Inc., 1971), p. viii.

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the decisive force in individual decision-making. T h e researcher should approach his topic not with an empty head but with an open mind. His research problem needs to be more precisely defined than in the past, and he needs to hold to his topic and not deviate to irrelevant material. A wealth of information lies in such primary source materials as church tithing records, tax records, county deed records, manuscript census schedules, federal water and land records, and other federal and territorial documents that need to be sifted thoroughly to shed more light on the nature and character of M o r m o n society. More comparisons need to be m a d e with other frontier societies. H o w important was ethnicity as a force shaping the character of Mormon communities? How frequent was divorce in early U t a h communities and what special circumstances added to family stress and the ability or lack of ability to handle it? What caused the high mobility among U t a h settlers and where did they go when they left their original home? Did they keep on moving from community to community? H o w common was claim-jumping in the acquisition of land titles? How soon and how extensively did land speculation develop on the Mormon frontier? H o w did some valuable state school land fall into private hands? These and many other questions await the careful research of a new crop of scholars.

The Mormon Invasion of Russian America: Dynamics of a Potent Myth BY GENE A. S E S S I O N S AND S T E P H E N W . S T A T H I S

in the spring of 1857, President James Buchanan decided to send a new governor and some other officials to Utah Territory under military escort. Portentously, the president chose not to announce his move in the hope that he could enforce it before opposition could rise among Brigham Young and the Mormons. On July 18 advance elements of the escort left Fort Leavenworth for Salt Lake City; inevitably, frantic Mormon scouts had within a few days informed Young that an army was en route to Utah. The prophet and his followers assumed the worst. The Great Basin was the fourth place in which the Saints had sought to establish their gathering place, and they quickly decided that this army was coming as a mob to drive them away once again, or even to exterminate them. Young and his lieutenants consequently launched into a campaign of belligerent oratory accompanied by urgent preparations for the defense of their promised valley. This unfortunate chain of events set into motion one of the strangest incidents in American history, variously known as the Utah Expedition, the Mormon War, the Utah War, Johnston's Army, the Contractor's War, and Buchanan's Blunder. J H O R T L Y AFTER HIS INAUGURATION

Dr. Sessions teaches history at Weber State College. Mr. Stathis is analyst in American history. Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress.

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As with so many small but unique episodes in history, scholars have examined the subject of the U t a h W a r very closely; 1 but typically, a significant part of the story has received little attention. Once the possibility of actual war with the Mormons dawned upon the American public, a frenzy of rumors exploded into the press and even into official circles. In the context of the well-developed anti-Mormon propaganda of the age, it was not difficult for the nation to fear the noise of every wind that blew oui of the U t a h desert. And so it was in the fall of 1857 as Americans tried to discover what was happening and what would happen when those seemingly rebellious disciples of Joseph Smith's "great imposture" -rose to resist the authority of the federal government and its armed force. At first, most seemed to believe that Brigham Young was only bluffing, that he was an inflated despot who would quickly shrink before the power of the United States Army and welcome it and the new territorial officers into the valley of the Great Salt Lake. 2 A minority, on the other hand, thought a disastrous war was in the making. Out of this belief grew sturdy myths about Mormon strength of numbers, a great and diabolical union with the Indians, and even a " M o r m o n Infernal M a c h i n e " that could annihilate tens of thousands of troops with a mysterious and inextinguishable fire. Most Americans (including the administration in Washington), however, refused to believe that the dastardly shrewd Brigh a m Young would really fight; but as his bluster continued into the winter and as he began to call in outlying Mormon colonies, even these realists doubted that there could be peaceful coexistence with these sham Saints of the frontier. A reasonable alternative quickly evolved — one the nation's newspapers in 1857 nurtured until it packed all the causal energy of a fullgrown myth. Its premise was simple: If the Mormons would not fight and would not give in, then they could only flee. This welcome thought satisfied nearly everyone — no bloodshed, no more Mormons. After this idea gained acceptance the rumors concentrated upon where the Mormons were going. Some suggested Russian America; others mentioned Vancouver Island, Washington Territory, Sonora, Lower California, and Ce itral or South America. 1 Literature on the U t a h Expedition is extensive. See, for example: Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850—1859 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966), and LeRoy R. Hafen and Ann W. Hafen, eds., The Utah Expedition, 1857-1858: A Documentary Account (Glendale, Calif.: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1958). 2 The New York Daily Tribune, October 28, 1857, editorialized: "For myself, I cannot and will not believe that a man who has displayed the practical sagacity of Brigham Young . . . will all at once stultify himself by butting his head against a wall which, perhaps, he might have climbed."

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T h e first and most persistent of these rumored destinations is what makes this whole story worth telling, primarily because of its possible effects upon the future course of American expansion. O n September 26, 1857, the Sacramento Daily Union reported that the Mormons were preparing to leave U t a h for the Russian possessions (Alaska), where they had "already driven stakes for a new Zion." T h e Democratic State Journal picked up the story,' and it slowly spread east until by midNovember it had reached the ears of Russian Minister Edward de Stoeckl — with predictable results. T h e first task in exposing the origins and consequences of this potent myth is to unravel its complex development; and by an examination of the seedbed of the Mormon-Alaska rumor, one may hope to write new chapters both to the U t a h W a r and to the Alaska Purchase, two unlikely bedfellows of American history. From the perspective of historiography, the traces of the story lead back to Frank A. Golder's work in the Russian Archives and to his subsequent landmark article in the 1920 American Historical Review on " T h e Purchase of Alaska" that provided the foundational work in Russian sources for every scholarly examination of the background of the American acquisition of Alaska. 4 Golder picked up the threads of the Mormon-Alaska scare in the Russian Archives and passed them on to succeeding scholars who perpetuated the idea that the threat of a Mormon exodus to Alaska in 1857 had something to do with the czar's ultimate decision to sell the territory to the United States. Apparently, however, no one looked any further — not even students of Mormon history whose works on the U t a h War and more general subjects would suggest by omission that at least within U t a h and Mormon sources the rumor never existed. 5 In examining that oversight, this paper proposes to probe the fertile minds of frightened Americans in 1857, to trace those peculiar events that became known as the Utah War, to find the ultimate origins of the rumor that the Mormons were going to invade Russian America, and to discover its meaning. 3 The October 5, 1857, issue of the Journal, another Sacramento newspaper, stated that the Mormon "destination is Salmon River in Washington Territory where they intend forming a settlement, extending north into the Russian possessions." 4 "The Purchase of Alaska," American Historical Review 25 ( 1 9 2 0 ) : 411—25. For an acknowledgment of the debt to Golder, see Victor J. Farrar, The Annexation of Russian America to the United States (New York, 1937), p. 1. 5 See, for example: Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People (New York, 1955), p. 365; Anatole G. Mazour, "The Prelude to Russia's Departure from America," Pacific Historical Review 10 ( 1 9 4 1 ) : 316—17; Furniss, Mormon Conflict, passim; Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 170-82.

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T h e first seed sown in the M o r m o n movement m y t h was probably Brigham Young's call in mid-August for the a b a n d o n m e n t of the outlying M o r m o n colony in Carson \ /T alley on the California border. This sudden recall corresponded with M o r m o n demonstratives to C a p t . Stewart V a n Vliet (who c a m e to U t a h a h e a d of the army to p r e p a r e for its reception) that the Saints were determined to stand a n d fight for U t a h and if necessary to burn it and flee to the mountains. Following Young's subsequent proclamation of martial law, his order to the Carson settlement aroused no small a m o u n t of wonder in neighboring California. It is noteworthy, therefore, that the first report of the Carson a b a n d o n m e n t to a p p e a r in a California newspaper told not only of M o r m o n plans to leave Carson Valley but also of preparations in Salt Lake for an exodus from U t a h . T h a t the M o r m o n s ' ultimate destination would be northwest into Alaska a p p e a r e d in print a few days later. As with most rumors, the certain origin of this idea — that Brigham Young planned a new hegira into Russian America, or anywhere else — remains in genuine obscurity. T h e r u m o r m a y have developed a m o n g the M o r m o n s at Carson Valley as they a t t e m p t e d to grasp the final m e a n i n g of their recall or p e r h a p s within the minds of suspicious Californians who worried continually over the activities of their peculiar neighbors in U t a h Territory. O n the other h a n d , it is relatively certain that the concept did not develop a m o n g the M o r m o n leaders at this point. Neither their speeches nor writings remotely suggested a p l a n whereby the M o r m o n s might leave the Great Basin in 1857. It is possible that Brigham Young a n d his fellowr apostles did consider or even talk about such a move, but the historical documents that have been preserved are void of any such idea.'5 Young h a d threatened to destroy all improvements if the troops c a m e into the valley, but he was talking only of a period of guerrilla warfare, a fleeing to the mountains, a n d not of any mass exodus to a new territory. Indeed, in September a n d October, w h e n the Alaska story mushroomed, the hierarchy in Salt Lake City was vigorously affirming its belief in U t a h as " t h e place to settle." T h e Saints returning from Carson Valley were merely welcome reinforcements for the fight ahead. 0 Brigham Young to Chester Loveland a n d the Saints in Carson Valley, August 15, 1857, Brigham Y o u n g Letter Books, Box 24, Archives Division, Historical D e p a r t m e n t , C h u r c h of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake C i t y ; Albert R. Page, "Orson H y d e a n d the Carson Valley Mission, 1855—1857" (Master's thesis, Brigham Y o u n g University, 1 9 7 0 ) , p p . 112—18; speech of H e b e r C. Kimball, August 30, 1857, in Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool, 1 8 5 1 - 8 6 ) , 5 : 1 6 1 - 6 5 ; speeches of Brigham Y o u n g reported in Harper's Weekly, September 19, 1857, Deseret News, September 23, 1857, a n d Journal of Discourses, 5:226—31; M a n u s c r i p t Hisiory of Brigham Young, September 15, 1857, L D S Archives; Democratic State Journal, September 21, 1857; Sacramento Daily Union, September 26, 1857.

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Through October at least, the Mormon leaders apparently believed that if they could hold out through the winter, the troops might give up or the United States might have too many troubles elsewhere to concern itself with Utah. 7 In the meantime, the advance elements of the U t a h Expedition had stalled on Ham's Fork in the Rockies. M o r m o n units with orders to hinder the army had begun a campaign to deprive the expedition of all comfort and movement by destroying forage, driving off or killing stock, and burning supply wagons. 8 By October 14 the Mormons had some eleven hunCapt. Stewart \'an Juliet. dred men under arms and manLibrary of Congress photograph. ning the mountain passes leading :I into the valley. Also, by the end of October, news of Brigham Young's statements to Van Vliet, his proclamation of martial law, and the movement rumor had reached the East Coast. The response was generally one of disbelief: Young was all talk. T h e press reported that Buchanan had no fear that the new governor and his escort would have trouble entering Utah and that Brigham and the Mormons would not dare to resist the power of the United States. 10 Then, in the first days of November, the movement rumor slowly gained acceptance as the answer to the Mormon question. 11 After news of the burned wagons reached the Atlantic a few 7

Journal of Discourses, 5 : 3 3 6 - 4 3 ; Young to H. G. Whitlock, October 1, 1857, BY Letter Books; "Journal History of the Church," October 18, 1857, LDS Archives; Wilford Woodruff Journal, October 14, 18, 20, 26, 1857, LDS Archives. Young evidently believed that schism between the states was no more than "a season" away. His optimism also fed upon reports of worsening conditions and morale among the snowbound federal troops. 8 Skirmishers under militia leader Lot Smith became Mormon folk heroes with their daring raids on army supply trains, the biggest of which occurred on October 5 when Smith burned two large trains the expedition had foolishly left unguarded. 8 Woodruff Journal, October 14, 1857. Woodruff reported 700 additional men mustered in the city and the possibility of raising 1,400 more. 10 Daily News (Philadelphia), October 26, 1857; New York Herald, October 26 and November 1, 1857. 11 See, for example, Boston Daily Journal, November 3, 1857; Evening Star (Washington D.C.), November 4, 1857; The States (Washington, D.C.), November 5, 1857.

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days later, few still doubted that Young planned to stall through the winter and then depart for a new land, probably the British and Russian possessions in the Northwest. 1 " T h e rumor h a d matured into a highly credible and potent myth. Just when all of this amplification on the Mormon problem began to make headlines in eastern papers, Baron Edward de Stoeckl returned to the United States from a trip to Europe. T h e rumors in the press about a Mormon migration to Alaska undoubtedly caught his attention, but his understandable concern increased greatly when a representative of the Russian-American Company in San Francisco wrote asking him about a Mormon movement into its territory. 1! By November 20 speculation on the Mormon move to Alaska had assumed such proportions that Stoeckl went to see Buchanan about it. T h e Russian asked the president if the Mormons would come peacefully or as conquerors. " I t is up to you," said Buchanan, "to solve this problem; as for us, we will be most happy to be rid of them." 14 Needless to say, the president's response provided Stoeckl with no small measure of consternation. Determined to bring the matter to the immediate attention of his government, he included it in a dispatch to Foreign Minister Aleksandr M . Gorchakov: . . . Brigham Young by a seditious proclamation and the destruction of a convoy of federal wagons, has challenged the Government. It is believed, however, that the Mormons, though inspired by a most bellicose determination, anticipate the possibility of another emigration and are even resigned to it. It is furthermore said that in such a case they will head North to settle on the lands of the Hudson Bay Company or in our American possessions.^*

Stoeckl proceeded to demonstrate his ultimate concern over the story. " I t goes without saying," he continued, "that this rumor is at present still 12 Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, D.C.), November 16, 1857; Boston Daily Journal, November 17, 1857; Daily News, November 17, 1857. Sketchy stories of the Mountain Meadow Massacre (in which a group of Mormons and Indians slaughtered a party of California immigrants crossing southern Utah) had arrived in eastern cities by this time and helped to fan anti Mormon sentiment. 13 Daily National Intelligencer, November 19, 1857; Boston Daily Journal, November 20, 1857; Illustrated London News, November 21, 1857; Stoeckl to Gorchakov, November 20, 1857, Dispatch No. 87, File 27, from the affairs of the Asia Department, No. 4.1.9. 1857-1868, Russian Archives, translation in Department of State decimal file 861.412/25, Record Group 59, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 14 Stoeckl to Gorchakov. See also Golder, "Purchase of Alaska, pp. 411-15. Stoeckl was not clear as to exactly when he had talked to Buchanan or under what circumstances, and evidence of the visit beyond the Stoeckl letter is not apparent. There is no reference to it^ for example, in Buchanan's papers. The meeting may have occurred on November 20, since it is certain that the Russian minister was in Washington that day (New York Times, November 28, 1857). Also, Buchanan held a cabinet meeting on November 20 to consider the Utah situation (The States, November 20, 1857, and Daily News, November 20, 1857). That same day, the National Daily Intelligencer printed Brigham Young letters "proving treason." 15 Stoeckl to Gorchakov.

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premature, but should it come to pass, it would force us either to offer armed resistance or give up a part of our territory." Upon receipt of the dispatch, Gorchakov apparently transmitted it to the czar (Alexander I I ) himself, for the original bears his majesty's handwritten inscription on the cover sheet: "This supports the idea of settling right now the question of our American possessions." Thus from this curious source developed a very solid indication that the Russians would seek to dispose of Alaska, consummation of which came ten years later. 16 As the czar's statement suggested, the Russians had been concerned for some time over their tenuous position in America. Manifest Destiny could just as easily wrest Alaska from them as it had West Florida and Texas Baron Edward de Stoeckl. from Spain and Mexico should JJbrary of Congress photograph bumptious American expansion suddenly turn northward. T h e czar had seriously contemplated a sale of his American possessions during the Crimean W a r (1854—56), but the offer of the United States was either ill-timed or insufficient. There can be little doubt, however, that the Russians had decided that they would eventually sell Alaska — preferably to the United States. T h e 1857 Mormon incident firmed their determination considerably, since to Stoeckl and his superiors the prolific Saints were merely a nasty manifestation of American dynamism. T h e myth's contribution to the final transaction a decade later is therefore undeniable, but the degree of its influence must remain an unknown. 17 Strangely enough, almost immediately after Stoeckl's apogee of worry over hordes of Mormons storming Alaska, the movement rumors began Ibid. See also Farrar, Annexation of Russian America, p. 3. Bailey, Diplomatic History, p. 365; Farrar, Annexation of Russian America, pp. 1—7.

The M or ill on Invasion

of Russian America

to shift, again coming from unidentifiable sources. O n November 22, 1857, the New York Herald exclaimed that the Mormons were going to Sonora, and that the administration also believed this. So, for a few days in late November and into December, discussion of the Mormon War had the Saints leaving for Mexico in the spring. Some believed Young would go with Mexico's blessing, and others saw him allying himself with the Indians of the region to hold off both Mexico and the United States. T h e New York Tt7nes correspondent in Washington provided a clue to the origin of this rumor on November 25 when he reported that Buchanan wanted Sonora for the United States and to secure that hope wanted to keep the Mormons out. Moreover, the Boston Daily Journal claimed that the Mormon delegate to Congress, John Bernhisel, had admitted a planned exodus to Sonora in the spring. 18 These rumors also, despite Buchanan's fears, were apparently without foundation. T h e December 10 issue of the Millennial Star, the official organ of the Latter-day Saints in England, laughed off the Herald rumor about Sonora. And in Utah, the leaders continued to express their determination to remain in their Great Basin kingdom and made no mention at this point of any mass exodus such as the growing movement myth supposed. Nevertheless, one student of the U t a h W a r believes that by the end of November, Brigham Young had mellowed his belligerency and had indeed resolved upon flight.1" T h e latter part of this judgment is subjective, however, since there is no evidence to support it. But even if some now-lost fragment of evidence of such intentions had escaped, it could not have been known in the East until some time later. A communication lag of from three to four weeks prevented any rapid dissemination of news from coast to coast. Throughout December and into the new year, the Mormon movement myth thrived and changed shape daily â&#x20AC;&#x201D; one paper believed in Alaska, another Sonora, and so on.20 By Christmas 1857 it had reached inevitable absurdities. For example, the Sonora version, upon reaching the Pacific, called for the complete devastation of California as part of Young's plan. T h e San Francisco Herald, still clinging to the Alaska ver18 See also, Boston Daily Journal, November 24 and December 10, 1857. Debates over Bernhisel's seating in Congress failed to mention the Mormon movement rumor (Congressional Globe, December 21, 1857, pp. 134, 165-71). 19 Furniss, Mormon Conflict, p. 128. See also Millennial Star, December 19, 1857; Woodruff Journal, November 7, 1857. Brigham had also called in the colony at San Bernardino, California, stating, "Utah alone is the gathering place for us. . . ." See Young to William J. Cox, November 5, 1857, BY Letter Books. 20 See, for example, Daily News, December 2, 1857. Newspapers in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Saint Louis, New York, and Sacramento, and Harper's Weekly carried stories on the movement myth also.

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sion, merely incorporated the Sonora rumor by declaring that the Mormons now planned to occupy through immigration the entire western region of the continent from Alaska into Mexico. 21 Credibility had traveled its full course. T h e end of this odd story is somewhat anticlimactic. In the spring, after a respected and longtime friend of the Saints (Thomas L. Kane) mediated and Buchanan sent peace commissioners to Utah, Brigham Young reluctantly agreed to allow the troops and the new federal officers to pass peacefully into the valley. O n June 26, Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston. 1858, the army under Gen. Albert Library of Congress photograph. Sidney Johnston marched through Salt Lake City and camped some distance west. T h e City of the Saints was silent and empty, the houses filled with straw ready to burn. But the rumors about a new exodus had not been fulfilled; for the Mormons, having restricted their flight to a few miles, were merely in self-imposed exile in the central valleys of the territory. Within a few weeks, after Brigham became convinced that the army was not another mob come to destroy or expel, most of his followers returned to their homes, and the hopes and beliefs of the nation that the Mormon problem would simply move aw^ay ended. 22 Viewed in retrospect, the origins of the Mormon movement myth of 1857 lie buried within the complicated mind of late antebellum America and its conception of the " M o r m o n problem." T h e nation was fast coming apart at the seams, and the scourge of Mormonism was a welcome issue upon which everyone could agree. Additionally, the burden of 21

Sacramento

Daily

Union,

December 18, 1857; San Francisco Herald, December 17,

1857. 22

For an excellent account of the move south, see Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, pp. 182â&#x20AC;&#x201D;94. According to Arrington, the decision to move into Utah Valley came no sooner than March 18, 1858. The brief abandonment of the northern settlements was not intended as a prelude to any mass exodus of the territory, for Young was still encouraging the idea of Utah as the permanent settling place of the Mormons. See Young to W. C. Young, March 10 and March 15, 1858, BY Letter Books. The Mormon leader seemed to believe that there were "hiding places for the Saints" in the vast, empty stretches of the territory's southern reaches.

The Mormon

Invasion

of Russian America

national troubles naturally encouraged a quick-solution mentality. T h e "Impending Crisis" of late 1857 (Helper's book, the Kansas-Lecompton Corstitution business, the August panic, and Walker's filibustering expedition of November) seemed to crush in on the psyche of America. By the end of November 1857 people were ready to welcome a final solution to any problem as a breath of fresh air, and the Mormon situation seemed to be the most readily solvable difficulty.23 T h e prospect of smashing Mormonism and hanging Brigham Young, however, would only be one more trauma to afflict the nation — it was much more pleasant to cont emplate the painless removal of this one perplexing thorn by means of a new Mormon hegira beyond the borders of the United States, T h e seed for the movement myth fell into fertile soil. T h e foregoing might suggest a generality concerning the American mood of the time which is not entirely accurate; nevertheless, the development of the movement myth argues forcefully that the search for a final solution to the Mormon problem intensified in 1857 because there seemed to be no compromise answer to the coming confrontation. Americans therefore visualized just three possible results: 1) a bloody and prolonged war with the Saints that would certainly result in the annihilation of Mormonism, 2) a forceful subjugation of the Mormons, or 3) their exit from the country. 24 Plainly, the latter outcome offered the least anxiety for a troubled nation. T h e country wanted to believe the Mormons planned to leave and would gladly let them do so. Some editors and others even suggested offering inducements — transportation, etc. — if the Saints were reluctant to go.25 T h e apocalyptic vision of rebellion and war was far too prevalent in the 1857 set of fears for Americans to 23 See Alexandria Gazette and Virginia Advertiser, November 21, 1857; Philadelphia Nortf American and United States Gazette, November 16, 1857. 24 For editorial thinking on these "solutions," see: Philadelphia North American and United States Gazette, October 30, December 10, 25, 1857; New York Daily Tribune, October 29, November 24, 1857; New York Times, November 13, 19, 1857; Alexandria Gazette and Virginia Advertiser, November 21, 1857; The States, November 18, 1857; San Francisco Herald, December 17, 1857; Sacramento Daily Union, December 2, 1857; Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 19, December 14, 1857; New York Herald, October 31, November 14, December 1, 1857 Daily News, November 23, 1857. Said the Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser of November 23, 1857: "We should be perfectly satisfied with such a termination [Mormon exodus] of the troubles, and be quite willing to turn over the colony to the Russians or the English. . . ." 25 The Atlantic Monthly 3 (1859) :583-84, still unhappy with Mormons in America, suggested free transport to the East Indies. One enterprising fellow tried to sell Brigham the Mosquito country in Central America. "The political pulse of the United States is to annex the whole world," Young replied. "We will not move from this territory as we are just where we intend to stay, and all hell cannot move us from here; but I can settle the Mosquito coast from other countries so fast that it would make them howl from north to south ("Journal History," May 24, 1858). See also Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, p. 185, and The States, November 21, 1357. The advice of the New York Herald, November 25, 1857, was "to give them no hope for further continuance of their adulterous abominations in Utah, but every possible encouragement to leave the country."

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hope for any other outcome of the Mormon War. The rumor was destined to success before it was born. An additional reason for hoping that the Mormons would leave was in the common belief that they were 90 percent foreigners, the residue of lower-class Europe. In the context of the nativism of the age, this factor â&#x20AC;&#x201D; grossly exaggerated as it was â&#x20AC;&#x201D; loomed large in the cultivation of the movement myth. In 1856 the Know-Nothing party candidate for the presidency, Millard Fillmore, garnered some 22 percent of the vote running on a radically nativist platform. The decade of the 1850s sawr a high-point in anti-immigration and naturalization sentiment in America. To many people in 1857, the Mormons were unwanted foreigners, and it was easy to believe in the ultimate deportation of these deluded aliens.26 One of the most durable beliefs about the Mormons, particularly among their western neighbors, was that they had formed an evil combination with savage Indians within their vast and forbidding territory, and that they would quickly ally themselves with tribes outside their realm if the need presented itself. This concept had some foundation in fact. Brigham Young had maintained a consistent policy of feeding rather than fighting the Indians, and general good feeling between the tribes and the Mormon settlements was a reality. Also, it was well known that Mormons believed the "Lamanites" to be a remnant of the house of Israel and a chosen people like themselves. But that Young had any power to call upon large numbers of them for assistance against the army is at best doubtful. Nevertheless, rumors persisted through 1857 that the Saints had a force of twenty thousand Indians under arms and prepared to pounce upon the enemies of Brigham Young. Following word of the Mountain Meadow Massacre, in which Mormons and Indians had indeed allied to destroy an immigrant party, the fear of a great and demoniacal alliance between the two benighted peoples doubled. 27 It became common thereafter to see news about the great collusion between the Indians and the Saints, while Brigham himself sought to neutralize those tribes whose friendship he doubted. 28 So it became almost irresistible for Americans, and especially westerners, to hope for the expeditious 2a See The States, November 19, 1857; Ray A. Billington, The Protestant Crusade, 18001860: A Study of the'Origins of American Nativism (New York, 1852), pp. 380-436; Daily Alta California (San Francisco), November 12, 1857. 27 The States, November 18, 1857, displayed the following headline: "Mormon and Indian Alliance Twenty Thousand Indians Ready to Take the Field Against the United States Troops Women to be Butchered." Other newspapers in Washington, D.C., New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento echoed the fear of Mormon-Indian collusion. 28 See, for example, New York Daily Tribune, November 3, 1857. Young's effort to neutralize the Indians is explicitly stated in Young to Wash-e-keek (Shoshone chief), November 2,

The Mormon

Invasion of Russian A771 erica

removal of such an insidious influence upon the aboriginal occupants â&#x20AC;&#x201D; one more element in the healthy growth of the Mormon exodus myth. Another factor that helped make a peaceful physical withdrawal of the Mormons attractive was belief in their almost magical strength. In addition to their supposed unholy control over the Indians, the Saints were thought to be extremely powerful strategically and in terms of numbers and determination. With regard to the strategic advantages of the Saints, the supposition was well founded, their isolation and mountain and desert environment making conventional attack impossible. A handful of men, occupying key passes, could wreak much havoc upon an army advancing upon Salt Lake City. But even so, the Mormons could not have hoped to keep out invaders once winter snows had melted. Fears arose! concerning Mormon strength of numbers and weaponry. Although never more than two thousand poorly trained and equipped Saints were in the mountains to meet the federal forces, rumor saw upwards of fifteen thousand crack soldiers with great and dreadful weapons ready to wage a bloody war of annihilation against the Gentiles. Of the Mormon fanatical determination there could be no doubt either. Every word from the Mormon leaders sounded like a treasonous threat and a sample of their insane decision to resist at all cost subjection to the federal government. All of this, combined with rumors concerning the miserable plight of the stalled expedition and the probability of its merciless slaughter at the hands of the Mormons, gave the Utah Expedition potential as a firstclass war. And as in all wars, each side hoped for the retreat of the other. 29 Another, more encompassing element of mythology surely contributed to the confusion and plethora of rumors surrounding the Utah W a r : Americans, from the beginnings of Mormonism, had "projected onto the hapless Saints the great mosaic of human hopes and terrors which occupied mid-nineteenth-century minds." ' Mormonism was habitually identified with every evil imaginable. Even the Indians were incapable of 1857, BY Letter Books: "I do not want you to fight the Americans nor to fight us for them, for we can take care of ourselves." 29 For press estimates of Mormon strength, reaction to Brigham Young's declaration of martial law on September 15, and concern for the Utah Expedition, see: Daily Alta California, October 14, November 25, 30, 1857; Daily News, November 18, 1857; Alabama Planter (Mobile), October 3, 1857; Washington Daily Union, November 7, 1857; New York Herald, November 14, 16, 20, December 28, 1857; New York Daily Tribune, October 26, 1857; Saint Louis Republican, October 26, November 11, 1857; Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 28, November 15, 16, 27, 1857; Daily National Intelligencer, October 28, November 7, 20, 1857; Evening Star, (Washington, D.C.), October 24, 1857; Alexandria Gazette and Virginia Advertiser, October 30, November 10, 1857; The States, September 14, 1857; New York Times, November 18, 19, 1857; Philadelphia North American and United States Gazette, December 11, 1857; Sacramento Daily Union, December 16, 1857. 30 Leonard J. Arrington and Jon Haupt, "The Missouri and Illinois Mormons in AnteBellum Fiction," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 5 (1970) :38.

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the degradation of the Mormons who were adulterous, murderous, and dishonest â&#x20AC;&#x201D; especially their leaders. They despised democracy and civilization and compared favorably to the mutinous sepoys of India. All of these ideas concerning the Mormons, and particularly the movement story, were symptomatic of the uncertain times and general beliefs about the Saints derived from fiction writers, indignant moralists, and apostate Mormons. As these rumors fed upon each other, every minor word from the West became "Important from Utah."' 1 Yet, the most important fuel for the movement myth probably came from the Mormons themselves. First, Brigham threatened to burn the valley and leave nothing but desolation if the troops pushed their way in. Few questioned that he w^as sincere, but it was easy to misconstrue his intentions. T h e burning would precede a flight to the mountains and not to a new and distant gathering place. Through 1857 Young and his lieutenants consistently affirmed their belief that they should stay indefinitely in Utah. A careful search of pertinent Mormon documents reveals not a single mention of exodus to Alaska, Sonora, or anywhere else during 1857. Second, the recalls from outlying settlements in the early fall suggested a general consolidation that could easily imply a new exodus. From this source the Alaska rumor apparently sprang full-blown and probably gave birth to the others. Third, the idea of the Mormons moving was a familiar one. T h e peculiar and clannish people had moved from New York to Ohio in 1831, to Missouri through the thirties, to Illinois in 1839, and finally to Utah beginning in 1847. And, prior to the U t a h move, the Mormons had openly considered Vancouver Island, at least for the coming British Saints. Even though that plan never developed and the Great Basin became "the place," it was precisely that kind of past news from the Mormons that gave the movement rumors of 1857, and particularly those pointing toward the Pacific, a flavor of truth. A decade before, similar fears of a Mormon invasion of Upper California had added considerably to the excitement over the impending American acquisition of that territory from Mexico. Finally, Young's far-ranging explorations and colonizations, such as his Fort Lemhi experiment on the Salmon River (1855-58), seemed to spell conquest or an intention to seek more room for his fast-growing people and greater isolation. 32 31 See, for example: Daily News, December 7, 1857; Daily National Intelligencer, November 20, 1857; Boston Daily Journal, November 21, 1857; New York Herald, December 1, 1857; The States, November 21, 1857; Sacramento Daily Union, December 9, 1857; Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 15, 1857. By coincidence, a bitterly disaffected Saint, John Hyde, Jr., was touring the East in the fall of 1857, feeding the cauldrons of anti-Mormon vitriol. 32 Easily misconstrued statements from Mormon leaders are found in Deseret News, October 14, 1857; Young to Orson Pratt, September 12, 1857, BY Letter Books. For more detail

The Mormon

Invasion

of Russian America

So by their own displays, the Mormons unwittingly cultivated the movement rumor, making it at least plausible. Some evidence exists that Brigham Young enjoyed the movement myth in his typically shrewd manner. For example, on November 3, 1857, he requested that as many newspapers as possible covering the period from July 1 be brought from California by two returning Saints. i ! In these he certainly perused the v a r o u s developments of the myth, and as if consciously to add a final irony to the story, on March 5, 1858, weeks after the Alaska rumor had died a natural death, Young inserted the following at the close of a letter to John Bernhisel in Washington: "We have our eyes on the Russian possessions."' 4 He had written nothing about Alaska before, and he apparently wrote nothing about it afterwards, and what he meant, or why he attached this isolated sentence to his letter to Bernhisel, only Brother Brigham could know. W h a t we do know is that historians have been conscious for some fifty years of the Stoeckl letter expressing concern over a rumored Mormon invasion of Alaska. Although none of them has bothered to explore the origins of the incident, they have passed its contents around freely, mentioning in passing the 1857 Mormon exodus rumor in background inti oductions to the Alaska Purchase. Perhaps even more important, professors of diplomatic history and American expansion have continued to give the Mormons nebulous credit for some stimulus to the acquisition of Alaska, often without knowing the first thing about it. Historians of U t a h and the Mormons, moreover, have completely ignored the question, or have decided that it is far too obscure a topic to concern theTi. Nevertheless, one fact is clear: during 1857, while the MormonAlaska rumor was expanding and causing the persistent waves that it did, Brigham Young and his followers were still clinging to a vision of U t a h as the place where Mormonism could flourish in peace and in preparation for its millennial destiny.

and comment on Mormon movements, see: Sacramento Daily Union, October 5, November 27, 1857; Daily Alta California, October 8, 14, 1857; Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 20, 1857; Democratic State Journal, October 6, 21, 1857; Young to W. J. Cox, October 11, 1857, and October 30, 1857, BY Letter Books; Joseph S. Wood, "The Mormon Settlement in San Bernardino, 1851-1857" (Ph.D. diss., University of Utah, 1968), p. 251; "Journal History," October 1, 1845, July 14, 24, 1846; J. B. Munro, "Mormon Colonization Scheme for Vancouver Island," Washington Historical Quarterly 25 ( 1 9 3 4 ) : 278-85; Sheldon G. Jackson, "Two Pro-British Plots in Alta California," Southern California Quarterly 55 (1973) : 114-18, 132-33, 137-38; New York Herald, November 19, 1857; Boston Daily Journal, December 10, 1857; The States, November 16, 1857; Eugene E. Campbell, "Brigham Young's Outer Cordon â&#x20AC;&#x201D; A Reappraisal," Utah Historical Quarterly 41 ( 1 9 7 3 ) : 221-53. 33 M

Young to William Huntington and Horace Clark, November 3, 1857, BY Letter Books. Young to Bernhisel, March 5, 1858, BY Letter Books.

The Gap in the Buchanan Revival: The Utah Expedition of1857-58 BY W I L L I A M P . M A C K I N N O N

Portrait of James Buchanan by G. P. A. Healy, dated 1859. Courtesy National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

The Gap in the Buchanan

Revival

interest in President James Buchanan's administration are probably surprised by but pleased with the Buchanan revival now underway. Within the past several years, a number of related works—some of them major studies—have appeared. They include T h e Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Guide to the Mircrofilm Edition of the James Buchanan Papers? an explanatory pamphlet to accompany the release of sixty microfilm reels of Buchanan materials; John Updike's play, Buchanan Dying;2 and Elbert B. Smith's The Presidency of James Buchanan? In addition, biographical studies are now appearing on Buchanan's cabinet officers, including John E. Simpson's Howell Cobb, the Politics of Ambition? which deals with Buchanan's secretary of the treasury, and John M. Belohlavek's " T h e Politics of Scandal: A Reassessment of John B. Floyd as Secretary of War, 18571861." 5 Despite this revival, westerners and those interested in Utah's history will be disappointed to learn that all of this work virtually ignores Buchanan's Mormon policy and his massive military intervention in U t a h Territory during 1857—58 with one-third of the federal army. Lost in the process is the chance to reexamine the origins of Buchanan's earliest and forceful reactions to federal-local disputes—those in U t a h Territory — a n d to use them as a basis for assessing his handling of simultaneous civil disorders in Kansas Territory and a subsequent secession crisis in South Carolina. Guide, for example, barely mentions Mormon matters, despite the U t a h Expedition's place as the country's most substantial military and financial undertaking during the period between the Mexican and Civil wars. I n the process, Guide, an otherwise fine research aid, compounds the earlier lapses committed by Irving J. Sloan in his 1968 edition of Jatnes Buchanan 1791-1868, Chronology—Documents—Bibliographical Aids? Guide's incompleteness is unfortunate, for the Buchanan papers that it is intended to describe do include letters bearing on the Utah JL ENNSYLVANIANS W I T H AN

Mr. MacKinnon, a resident of Birmingham, Michigan, has written historical articles for a number of western journals. 1 The Guide, edited by Lucy Fisher West (Philadelphia, 1974), and the microfilm materials follow by more than sixty years the publication of a less complete collection of Buchanan documents in John B. Moore, The Works of James Buchanan, 12 vols. (Philadelphia, 1908-11). The new project was sponsored by the National Historical Publications Commission. 2 (New York, 1974). This work, Updike's first play, was badly savaged by the critics. 3 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1975). * (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973). 5 West Virginia History 31 (1970) : 145-60. 6 (Dobbs Ferry, Conn., 1968). The editor's only references to Utah appear on p. 12.

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Expedition from such key figures as Thomas L. Kane, W. M. F. Magraw, Gov. Alfred Gumming, and Generals William S. Harney and Persifor F. Smith. 7 Similarly, the focus of Buchanan Dying, a work described by the dust jacket as "a play meant to be read," is 1868 and the former president's deathbed at Wheatland rather than 1857 and his military adventures in Utah. Through three acts, a series of flashbacks and a parade of visitors involving nearly fifty characters—some resembling Dickens's Ghost of Christmas Past—Updike confronts Buchanan with the personal and political shortcomings of his life. One can only assume that Brigham Young would have been amused by Buchanan's repeated, on-stage use of a bedpan—a prop employed at Updike's direction for reasons as yet unclear. Yet, if this scenario is heavily laced with commentaries on what have come to be regarded historically as Buchanan's weaknesses—indecision, avarice, superficiality, vacillation, and opportunism—Updike attempts to add a measure of perspective and understanding for his protagonist by means of an eighty-page afterwrord, a sympathetic section that serves the dual function of textual notes and bibliography. Having set out to analyze his native Pennsylvania's only president, Updike's afterword concludes that "All in all, I did not find in these general histories [consulted] confirmation that Buchanan was 'the worst President in the history of the country.' : This conclusion, in turn, drove National Review's critic, D. Keith Mano, to the acerbic judgment that ". . . John Updike, out of kindness or acedia, has very little to say. And no one writing in America says it better." 8 With respect to Utah or Mormon affairs, Buchanan Dying offers only a few brief comments and virtually no insights. The first reference appears in act 1 and involves an innocuous allusion to "the Mormon [Great Salt] lake" during the dying president's prattlings to his housekeeper. The second comment occurs during a flashback in act 2 in which Buchanan, newly inaugurated, promises his niece that his administration will "bring the ruttish Mormons to heel." There then follow two brief references to the Utah Expedition within the context of Secretary John B. Floyd's subsequent financial mismanagement of the War Department. Updike's treatment of the subject is completed with Mrs. Howell Cobb's flattering observation, "Look at the wonderful way you bullied Brigham 7 See Microfilm Edition of the James Buchanan Papers, Series 1 (Incoming Correspondence), reels 34 and 35 (December 1857-September 1858). 8 National Review 26 (August 30, 1974) : 987-88.

The Gap in the Buchanan Revival

Young," and Harriet Lane's offer to read to her uncle about "the Mountain Meadow massacre committed by the Mormons," a proposal that Buchanan declines in favor of an account of John Brown's raid on Hamper's Ferry. 9 Buchanan's choice of reading material speaks volumes with respect to Updike's own interests, for if Buchanan Dying disappointingly treats Mormon affairs as a matter of occasional, incidental dialogue rather than as a key policy area, the responsibility rests as much with Updike's choice of research sources as with his own craft. Notwithstanding the National Observer's complaint that Updike's afterword reviews "every turgid scholarly book, essay, and article on Buchanan, falling back on pedantry as a sportswriter falls back on statistics," the fact of the matter is that U p dike's bibliography is not exhaustive, having missed basic analyses of Buchanan's western policies such as Norman F. Furniss's 1960 study, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859.10 At the heart of this gap, in turn, is Updike's excessive reliance upon Professor Philip S. Klein's 1962 biography, President James Buchanan, a fine study but one preoccupied with Buchanan's Pennsylvania, European, and Washington affairs to the exclusion of all but a meager eight paragraphs devoted to the Utah Expedition.11 Interestingly, it was Klein who developed most of the biographical material in Guide. For similar reasons, i.e., an overreliance on Klein, Professor Smith's The Presidency of James Buchanan, the latest entry in the Buchanan revival, provides only the barest account of the Utah Expedition and no insights. Smith, in fact, stretches Klein's eight-paragraph treatment of the subject to only nine paragraphs of his own, suggesting in a chapter entitled "Lamb, Lion, or Fox?" that dispatch of the Utah Expedition was one of "several occasions as president . . . [in which] he indicated a firm and immediate willingness to threaten force or send men into battle." 12 Although Smith hints at a relationship between Buchanan's Mcrmon policy and his subsequent handling of secession in South Carolina, he never develops the parallel. Like Updike, it appears that Smith was unaware of Furniss's key study. Recently published material dealing with Buchanan's cabinet officers is equally disappointing in terms of its focus on western military 9

Updike, Buchanan Dying, pp. 7, 77, 101, 109, 126, 149. *Â° National Observer, July 6, 1974; Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960). 11 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962), pp. 315-17. 12 Smith, The Presidency, pp. 65-68. A professor of history at the University of Maryland, Smith wrote this volume for the American Presidency Series.

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affairs. Despite a chapter entitled "Buchanan's Lieutenant" dealing with the crises of 1857-58, Simpson's Howell Cobb: The Politics of Ambition mentions neither Mormons nor Utah. This lapse is incomprehensible in view of Simpson's characterization of Cobb as "principal patronage and policy counsel to the President. . . . Second only to the President in power and prestige. . . ." and one's realization that the Utah Expedition cost an estimated $14 to $40 million at a time when the national debt, administered by Cobb's Treasury Department, rose from $25 to $65 million. 13 It is difficult to believe that Cobb did not play a key role in Buchanan's initial decision to intervene in U t a h as well as in the subsequent deliberations on financing the movement of one-third of the army west in the midst of a major economic depression. John M. Belohlavek sheds somewhat more light on the subject but nonetheless basically misses a similar opportunity with his article " T h e Politics of Scandal: A Reassessment of John B. Floyd as Secretary of War, 1857-61." Recognizing that "historians have generally held the Buchanan administration in low esteem and that Floyd has helped it reach this nadir," Belohlavek notes that "the Secretary was forced to face a major crisis in 1857 in U t a h with apparently little cabinet assistance." However, other than to note that Secretary Floyd supported Buchanan and "emerged as the most vigorous exponent of forceful suppression of the Mormons . . . ," Belohlavek confines his analysis of the origins and resolution of this "major crisis" to two brief paragraphs and the appallingly simplistic conclusion that "by June, 1858, the Utah issue was resolved by a small show of military force and the diplomacy of two commissioners." With some sympathy for Floyd, Belohlavek does devote substantial attention to long-standing accusations that he mismanaged the financing of the U t a h Expedition and subsequently channelled federal arms to Southern arsenals where they were vulnerable to capture by secessionists.11 In the process, however, Belohlavek has ignored the related and equally damaging charges that Floyd, a Virginian, engaged in a secessionist plot with Cobb of Georgia and Secretary of the Interior Jacob Thompson of Mississippi to use the Utah Expedition as a means of bankrupting the federal government and scattering its regiments in the West. 13 Fortunately, we also now have Harold D. Langley's edition of To Utah with the Dragoons to provide a piece of what has heretofore 13

Simpson, Howell Cobb, pp. 110-45. Belohlavek, "The Politics of Scandal." 15 See note 28 below for these conspiracy theories. 14

The Gap in the Buchanan

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been missing from the current Buchanan revivalâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;an insider's account (albeit a low level one) of the Utah Expedition. 16 Specifically, the book consists of twenty-five letters written by " U t a h , " an anonymous dragoon private, to the editor of the Philadelphia Daily Evening Bulletin during the period May 1858-May 1859. T h e first eighteen letters cover " U t a h ' s " march from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Territory, to C a m p Floyd, Utah, a journey during which he served in a company recruited in the Philadelphia area to reinforce the Second Regiment of Dragoons. T h e balance of the material deals with " U t a h ' s " experiences in Los Angeles and the mining regions of Arizona, an adventure that followed his wounding and premature disability discharge from the army. From the letters' internal evidence, we know that " U t a h " was young (early twenties), was probably born in Europe, and had worked as the printer of a rural Pennsylvania newspaper before his enlistment. In the final chapter of the book, Langley leads the reader through a fascinating, first-rate and exhaustive examination of the Second Dragoons' medical, personnel, and payroll records in an attempt to determine " U t a h ' s " identity, a process that yields Pvt. Henry W. Fisher as a likely but not certain candidate. While lauding Langley's scholarship, Professor Walter Rundell, Jr. of the University of Maryland has concluded that " . . . this book provides the specialist in Western history with little new information . . . ," an assessment that overlooks " U t a h ' s " rather unusual political and personal perspective. 17 Admittedly, to the the extent that " U t a h " deals with the 16 To Utah with the Dragoons and Glimpses of Life in Arizona and California, (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1974). " History Reviews of New Books 3 (April 1975) : 141.

The bugle corps of Johnston's Army, Historical Society collections.

Camp

Floyd,

Utah.

Utah

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physical features of Independence and Chimney rocks, South Pass and a variety of rivers west of Fort Leavenworth, he covers a subject that has become ail-too familiar in such narratives. However, it should be noted that these letters do represent one of the relatively few enlisted accounts of a c a m p a i g n already top heavy with the diaries of Buchanan's company commanders. Perhaps even more important, " U t a h " also provides the perspective of a vocal, unabashed Fremont Republican ordered on a two-thousand-mile m a r c h by a Democratic administration. " U t a h ' s " political bias becomes even more interesting with the realization that his letters were intended for publication and that his medium, the Bulletin, was based in President Buchanan's own home state. Whereas other participants such as Captains Jesse A. Gove, 18 J o h n W. Phelps, 1 9 and Albert Tracy 2 0 have unwittingly projected glimpses of either limitless ambition or t e m p e r a m e n t a l conflicts with their own troops a n d superiors, Private " U t a h " provides speculation as to the basic purpose of the expedition (a Democratic ploy to divert attention from either an attack on Mexico's n o r t h e r n states or the concentration of federal troops in "bleeding" Kansas), 2 1 while simultaneously ventilating contempt for the "poltroonery" of his West Point officers.22 P e r h a p s because of his political bias, " U t a h " is unable to resist reporting that some of his associates "insinuate that the old m a n [Buchanan], having lived so long without getting a wife, is envious of Brother Brigham's success a m o n g the ladies, a n d takes this [military] mode of venting his rage." 2 8 P e r h a p s the most refreshing aspect of " U t a h ' s " letters is the extent to which they reflect his willingness to alter basic prejudices with the impact of direct experience. For example, " U t a h " h a d enlisted in the spring of 1858 in the belief that, as he wrote from Fort Leavenworth, " t h e cause of morality d e m a n d s the extermination of this nest of [Morm o n ] adulterers . . . the only missionaries that can make h e a d w a y with t h e m are such as wield the sabre a n d bear the musket." How ever, within 18 Otis G. H a m m o n d , ed., The Utah Expedition, 1857â&#x20AC;&#x201D;1858: Letters of Capt. Jesse A. Gove . . . to Mrs. Gove (Concord: New Hampshire Historical Society, 1928). Gove served with the expedition as a company commander in the T e n t h Regiment of Infantry. 39 Diary of Capt. J o h n W. Phelps, manuscript, New York Public Library, New York City. Excerpts were published in LeRoy R. Hafen and Ann W. Hafen, eds., The Utah Expedition, 1857-1858: A Documentary Account (Glendale, Calif., T h e Arthur H . Clark Company, 1958). Phelps commanded a light battery from the Fourth Regiment of Artillery. 20 J. Cecil Alter, ed., The Utah War: Journal of Albert Tracy, 1858-1860, published as Utah Historical Quarterly 13 ( 1 9 4 5 ) . Tracy was a company commander in the T e n t h Infantry. T h e original of his journal and his sketches are also in the New York Public Library. 21 " U t a h ' s " thoughts on Buchanan's motivations appear in Langley, To Utah with the Dragoons, pp. 20, 27, 30. 22 Ibid., pp. 38-39, 4 1 , 52, 62, 73, 121, 123. 23 Ibid., p. 21.

The Gap in the Buchanan Revival

five months, personal contact with Mormon emigrants, bishops, and Brigham Young himself had convinced him that ". . . Uncle Sam has not a more faithful, loyal, liberty-loving people within his proud domains than they. . . ,"24 Similarly, what began as contempt and loathing for the Plains Indians develops through " U t a h ' s " letters into admiration and the belief that the tribes were being brutalized by the army, a position to which he held even after sustaining a crippling wound in an Indian skirmish. Despite " U t a h ' s " entertaining and valuable barracks-level assessment of Buchanan's western military strategy, there is still an enormous gap in our understanding of this aspect of his administration. By virtually ignoring President Buchanan's prosecution of this significant campaign, Updike, Smith, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Simpson, and Belohlavek have deprived us of another opportunity to assess the extent to which, if at all, Buchanan committed nearly one-third of the United Stales Army to Utah in order to: (a) enrich commercial friends of his administration, including the freighting firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell; (b) divert national attention from the corrosive slavery dispute in Kansas; or (c) assign federal troops to western posts remote from any potential Southern secession movement. Conspiracy theories involving all three areas of motivation have bee 1 advanced by various observers since 1857, with enigmatic statements by the participants adding to the intrigue. For example, in a speech on July 26, 1857, Brigham Young commented that Buchanan "did not design to start men on the 15th of July to cross the plains to this point on foot. Russell & Co. will probably make from eight to ten hundred thousand dollars. . . ." : One of Young's daughters later expressed similar beliefs as did the Deseret News and, surprisingly, Buchanan's ranking military advisor.26 Kansas affairs also appear in a potentially new light when one considers Robert Tyler's advice to Buchanan that ". . . we can supersede the Negro-Mania with the almost universal excitement of an Anti-Mormon Crusade . . . the pipings of Abolitionists will hardly be 24

Ibid., and p. 101. Hafen and Hafen, The Utah Expedition, p. 183. 20 Susa Young Gates and Leah D. Widtsoe, The Life Story of Brigham Young (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1930), p. 182; Deseret News, July 29, 1857; and Winfield Scott, Autobiography of Lieutenant General Scott (New York, 1864), II, p. 604. Although the role of federal mail contractors has been explored (William P. MacKinnon, "The Buchanan Spoils System and the Utah Expedition: Careers of W. M. F. Magraw and John M. Hockaday," Utah Histc rical Quarterly 31 [1963]: 127â&#x20AC;&#x201D;50), there has not been a good assessment of Russell, Maj( rs & Wadell's involvement, if any, in lobbying to start the expedition despite several historie; of the company's freighting activities during the period. 25

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heard amidst the thunders of the storm we shall raise."" 7 And finally, there is the cryptic comment by John B. Floyd to a Virginia secessionist audience in January 1861 after resigning his portfolio as Buchanan's secretary of war, that "I undertook so to dispose of the power in my hands, that when the terrific hour came you and all of you, and each of you, should say, 'This man has done his duty!' : None of these theories has been adequately explored. Missing also is the means of assessing the impact of massive Mormon resistance in 1857—and the attendant military standoff along Utah's eastern border—on Buchanan's appetite for dealing vigorously with South Carolina four years later. At this point it is fair to consider the reasons for this significant, although perhaps not catastrophic, gap in the history of federal-Mormon relations. In brief, it appears that the national fascination with Lincoln and the Civil War, relatively little of which impacted militarily on Utah, has until recently served to divert attention from all but the conclusion of President Buchanan's administration. T h e principal exception—because of the slavery issue—has been Buchanan's handling of "bleeding" Kansas during 1857-58, although it has been and could still be argued, as discussed above, that military and political affairs in that territory were closely intertwined with the decision to intervene further w^est in Utah. Perhaps if Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston had not died at Shiloh in 1862, he rather than Lee might have emerged as the preeminent Confederate field commander, with command of the Utah Expedition recalled as his greatest prewar challenge. 29 27 Tyler to Buchanan, April 27, 1857, in Philip G. Auchampaugh, Robert Tyler, Southern Rights Champion (Duluth, Minn.: Himan Stein, 1934), p. 180. Although many Republicans felt, as did "Utah," that the expedition was initiated to increase the size of federal garrisons in Kansas which might in turn be used by Buchanan, a Democrat, to suppress the antislavery faction in Kansas, inadequate attention has been given to the conspiracy theory that views the Utah Expedition as a means of funneling federal troops out of Kansas to Utah, thereby diverting public attention from civil disorders in Kansas. See Albert G. Browne, "The Utah Expedition," Atlantic Monthly 3 (1859) : 364. 28 Cited in A. Howard Meneely, The War Department, 1861: A Study in Mobilization and Administration (New York, 1928), p. 41. The accusation that the Utah Expedition was the result of a plot by Secretary of War John B. Floyd and other Southern cabinet officers to scatter the regular army to isolated garrisons in the West so that it could not counter secession movements may be found in John A. Logan, The Great Conspiracy: Its Origins and History (New York, 1885), p. 118; and T. B. H. Stenhouse, The Rocky Mountain Saints (Salt Lake City, 1904), p. 346. 29 See Charles P. Roland, Albert Sidney Johnston, Soldier of Three Republics (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964), pp. 185-237, for an account of Johnston's command of the Utah Expedition. The irony of Johnston's assignment to suppress an alleged Mormon rebellion and his subsequent service as a Confederate general has prompted comments, but no one has advanced a serious conspiracy theory linking Johnston to Floyd's alleged efforts to manipulate troops for Southern purposes. Nonetheless, Johnston's reputation has been dogged by accusations that upon leaving Utah to command the Department of the P a c i f i c - - h i s last federal assignment — he attempted to foster a secessionist movement in California. See ibid., pp. 244-51, and Benjamin F. Gilbert, "The Mythical Johnston Conspiracy," California Historical Society Quarterly 28 (1949) : 165-73.

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Another, less obvious explanation for the expedition's relative obscurity lies in the phenomenon through which, as the L D S church has ceased to be a focus of controversy and hatred, the more sensational aspects of its past—the U t a h Expedition among t h e m — h a v e receded from the national awareness. While welcome from a social and religious standpoint, this "benign neglect" or lowering of the church's historical profile has brought with it gaps in the understanding of U t a h ' s early territorial period especially among eastern non-Mormons. In 1976, for example, Morris K. Udall, a lapsed Mormon, ran for the Democratic presidential nomination without his family or religious affiliation becoming a major issue. This was a signficant indicator, in view of the fact that Udall is a great-grandson of J o h n D. Lee, the M o r m o n militia officer convicted and executed for the 1857 M o u n t a i n M e a d o w Massacre, which was in turn the principal atrocity connected with the U t a h Expedition.' 0 Similarly, when news of the Mylai atrocities surfaced in 1969, press attempts to place t h e m in historical perspective failed to mention the role of M o r m o n militiamen in the M o u n t a i n M e a d o w slaughter but focused on the misconduct of federal volunteer or regular troops at Sand Creek, Colorado, in 1864; at W o u n d e d Knee, South Dakota, in 1890; and throughout the Philippine Insurrection following the Spanish-American War. 3 1 T h e complete absence of analysis as to the extent to which, if at all, the M o u n t a i n M e a d o w Massacre was relevant to or precedent for the Mylai incident is even more remarkable when one considers that several Latter-day Saints were a m o n g the troops at Mylai a n d that a M o r m o n served as chief defense counsel for Lt. William L. Calley, Jr. 32 30 Although the Mormon church's denial of priesthood to Black members did arise as a minor issue late in Udall's 1976 campaign, the John D. Lee or Mountain Meadow issue was barely mentioned despite such stories as Robert S. Boyd, "Udall Has Come Far Lugging Heavy Handicaps," Detroit Free Press, M a r c h 22, 1976. The only reference of which the author is aware appeared in Molly Ivins, "Liberal from Goldwater Country," New York Times Magazine, February 1, 1976, p. 12. Ivins wrote: "One of his great-grandfathers . . . w a s executed for his part in the' Mountain Meadow Massacre," and quoted Udall's younger brother, Burr: "When I was a kid, all I knew was that if someone said ' J o n n D. Lee' to you, you were supposed to slug 'im. See, Lee was an infamous figure among the Mormons, but in the family, we were supposed to stand up for him." See Juanita Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre ( N o r m a n : University of Oklahoma Press, 1962), and John Doyle Lee: Zealot-Pioneer Builder-Scapegoat (Glendale, Calif.: T h e Arthur H. Clark Company, 1964). 31 See Douglas Robinson, "2 Massacres in the Past Recalled," New York Times, November 28, 1969; and D. B. Schirmer, "Mylai Was Not the First T i m e , " New Republic, April 24, 1971, pp'. 18-21. William Wise's recent book, Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Legend and a Monumental Crime (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1976), makes no attempt to see the massacre in a larger historical context either. 32 For the reactions of three Mormon troopers in Task Force Barker, see Seymour M. Hersh, My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath (New York: 1970), pp. 30, 37. 33 Although most discussions of amnesty for Vietnam offenders cite the more than thirtyfive presidential pardons or amnesties granted since 1795 — including Benjamin Harrison's 1893

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Similarly, a national controversy continues to rage over the issue of unconditional amnesty for V i e t n a m offenders without any appreciation by press, Congress, or the advocates on both sides of the issue that President Buchanan terminated the U t a h Expedition in 1858 with a blanket p a r d o n for w h a t was then considered to be U t a h ' s rebellious population. 3 3 O t h e r examples of an unawareness of U t a h ' s history a p p e a r regularly in the national press. 34 Those with an interest in James Buchanan's M o r m o n policy and its impact on U t a h may have to await the appearance of other investigators, for studies comprising the current Buchanan revival rely excessively on Professor Klein's fine but eastern-oriented studies a n d simply do not work the problem adequately from a western standpoint. W h a t is badly needed is a thorough analysis, using Furniss's study as a foundation, of Buchanan's specific decision to intervene against w h a t he considered to be M o r m o n secession in U t a h , the related Cabinet deliberations, and the subsequent impact of both on Buchanan's handling of the Southern secession crisis. amnesty for polygamous Mormons â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the author is unaware of any references to Buchanan's 1858 pardon for Utah's allegedly rebellious population. Typical listings appear in U. S., Congress, House, Amnesty (Hearings before the Committee on the Judiciary's Subcommittee on Courts, Civil Liberties, and the Administration of Justice, M a r c h 1974), 93d Cong., 2d sess., Serial No. 35, pp. 59-60, 611-12, 6 7 2 - 7 3 . See also New York Times, January 22, 1977. 34 T h e reporting of U t a h affairs by the National Observer could serve as an example. One article discussed a plague of grasshoppers at Utah's Hill Air Force Base and the simultaneous death of bees in neighboring communities without the slightest awareness of the symbolic role of both insects in Utah's early history. Similarly, when Utah's mostly Mormon delegation to the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City was asked by a Missouri motel owner to move to a Kansas hotel, the event was reported without any appreciation of the symbolism of a Mormon "expulsion" from Missouri. See issues for the weeks ending August 10, 1974, and June 26, 1976. In connection with this point and the issue raised in note 33, it is significant that national press coverage of the execution of Gary M. Gilmore at the U t a h State Prison on January 17, 1977, did not rehash the firing squad death of John D. Lee 100 years earlier.

Shonesburg: The Town Nobody Knows BY JANICE F. DE MILLE

The cut stone on the chimney and gable end of the Oliver DeMille home reflects the craftsmanship of the Millett family, known for their work on the Kirt'and Temple. Photographs accompanying this article were furnished by the author.

Rio Virgin and trudging up the brush-covered hill, one cannot help pausing to marvel at the surrounding beauty. High above tower the pink cliffs of the Parunuweap Canyon, majestic in their lofty splendor. Below, the river sparkles. T o the west, encompassed by a rickety fence, lies a small cemetery. T o the east, the fence along the boundary of Zion National Park is visible. Atop the small hill stands the W A D I N G ACROSS T H E

Mrs. DeMille is the author of Portraits of the Hurricane Pioneers (Hurricane, Ut.: Homestead Publishers, 1976).

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The tiny cemetery at Shonesburg is one of the few visible remains of a Mormon settlement founded in connection with the Dixie Cotton Mission.

large cut-stone house of Oliver DeMille, and in the valley below are a few chimneys and portions of walls, the only clues that here a town once existed. Although the neighboring canyons of Zion National Park (which the Indians called Mukuntuweap) are yearly visited by thousands, Parunuweap Canyon and the remains of the pioneer village are rarely seen. But the beauty of the cliffs towering above is no less striking here than in Zion. If anything, its very seclusion fills the occasional visitor with awe. Down through the years, the story of Shonesburg has been lost. There are still a few alive, however, who were born there or who remember visiting there from neighboring pioneer settlements. And descendants of the Shonesburg pioneers have material in their own families about parents' and grandparents' experiences, trials, joys, and sorrows in Shonesburg. Shonesburg began with President Brigham Young's call of pioneers for the Dixie Cotton Mission on October 7, 1861. Among those called from Sanpete County were Oliver DeMille, George Petty, Hyrum Stevens, Alma Millett, Hardin Whitlock, and Charlie Clapper and their families. These pioneers looked forward to their new homes. One said, " T h e Lord is kind in calling us to this wonderful mission. I like a warm climate better than a cold one." 1 Little did they realize the difficult task ahead. 1

Lola Bryner, "History of Oliver DeMille," unpublished paper.

Shonesburg

'-*%«»_ — %

Art DeMille, a Shonesburg native, guided a survey group up Parunuweap Canyon in 1926-27. The spectacular cliffs remind one of nearby Zion National Park.

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They left Sanpete for Dixie together, arriving below the area that became Rockville. Accounts vary in details of ensuing events, but at least some of the settlers spent part of the winter below Rockville, where the great floods of 1861-62 washed away their farms, causing them to move on to a new location. Traveling two miles up the Virgin to where it forked, they followed the east fork. T h e traveling was slow and rough as they made their way through the mud with their ox teams. After crossing the stream several times, they left the river bottom and climbed over some low hills onto a torchbrush flat that led them to a spot by the river. O n three sides were low sand hills covered with grass, brush, scrub cedars, and pinion pines; to the back were pink cliffs towering fully fifteen hundred feet into the air. Out of the canyons came Shones Creek and South Creek, which joined to empty into the east fork of the Rio Virgin. When they arrived, Oliver DeMille purchased land from an old Paiute Indian chief named Shones (or Shunes) and gave the name Shonesburg to the settlement. DeMille family records claim that Oliver was there first in 1861, while some records state that the settlers arrived together in early 1862. DeMille sold pieces of land to the other settlers, although some of them may have purchased their land directly from Indians in the area. Available land was divided into small lots to accommodate newcomers. According to Oliver DeMille I I , ten families made their homes there at that time. A townsite was laid out on the northwest side of the river and the settlement of Shonesburg began. Although there was trouble from the beginning for this new community, trouble was not new to early U t a h settlers. T h e heavy rains, which had made travel in the mud with no roads slow and difficult, continued for sixteen more days. Finally they could begin clearing the land and building homes. Most of them built log cabins, helping each other. Oliver I I wrote that his father built two log cabins, one with a dirt floor and roof and the other with a rock floor and cedar bark roof. T h e men began immediately working on a ditch to bring water to their farms. Oliver DeMille, George and Albert Petty, Hardin Whitlock, Hyrum Stevens and George Cathen cleared land, planted orchards and vineyards, planted corn, and made the irrigation ditch. Using pick and shovel, crowbar and scraper, they built dugways along the river as the first semblance of a road into this little valley. T h e way along the river was narrow and steep; making their road required much hard work and patience. T h e settlers' hard work yielded only a small crop. They built dams across the river in attempts to make better use of the farmland

Shonesburg

by raising the water to the level of the ditches. But they could not control the Rio Y^irgin; floods carried away their clams, sometimes two or three in a season. Only constant effort kept their farms going. By July 1864 Henry Stevens was presiding over seven families, a total of fortyfive souls, and seventy-five acres of cotton. Most of the land was planted with corn, but one acre of wheat had been planted. In 1865 Shonesburg residents finally had a good harvest of cotton, corn, and cane. Cotton was used by some of the people for beds. O. D. Gifford, who was a small boy at that time, remembered having only cotton for a bed. When the weather was cold, they would cover themselves with the cotton; when it was hot, they would lie on top of it. T h e necessities of life were scarce. White bread was a luxury. When the John Allred family had company for dinner one Sunday, there was not enough room for everyone at the table. T h e children had to wait and eat after the adults. As young Ed Allred stood and watched intently while the adults ate, he began to cry loudly. His mother jumped up to see what was wrong, but Ed continued screaming and could not answer. Finally he blurted out, "Brother so and so took the last biscuit." A correspondent wrote to the Deseret News in 1866: We had an unusual amount of snow for this region the past winter. We have had an unusually late frost this spring doing damage to some of the early fruits such as apricots and grapes, peaches are not hurt and of these there will an abundance. A short time past six of us Shonesburgers (by order of our probate Judge) penetrated these hither-to impassable mountains and made a trail over to Berry's Valley (Long Valley). We have already received impatches by this new trail, one having reached Grafton is from Manti. 2

This was the same trailâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;referred to on early maps and papers as the Wiggle or Wriggle Trailâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;they used to take their cattle up the mountain for summer grazing. Some say that only native old-timers could possibly make it up such a narrow trail. During the southern U t a h Indian wars of 1866-67 the authorities in St. George advised settlers to gather in Rockville. Residents of Grafton, Springdale, Shonesburg, and even Virgin arrived in Rockville with only the bare necessities. Those few who could moved in with relatives, but most of these pioneers, torn from their homes, camped outside. They used wagon covers for tents, or merely lived in their wagons. They made campfires for cooking and warmth. School was held under the old 2

Deseret News, April 9, 1866.

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boweries in the winter with Nancy Briggs as the teacher. Men were stationed on the south mountains to watch for Indians. T h e farms in other communities had to be kept alive, so people went out in groups to work on their farms during the clays, coming back to Rockville at night to sleep. Oliver DeMille II recorded: I was not old enough to stand guard or help fight the Indians at the time of the Indian War, but I remember that Father couldn't ride horses, so he hired men to go in his stead. O n e time he hired one of the Averett boys to go on the mountain to scout for him, and the Indians killed the boy with arrows. They surrounded him and he had no means of escape, so was killed. When the rest of the party arrived the Indians had fled. Another time, Brother Russell, an elderly man, and Hy Stevens were up on the Shonesburg mountain on guard and the Indians shot Hy through his side with a gun. Mr. Russell put Hy on his horse behind him and went all the way to Cedar City to get help, and Hy got all right. 3

In 1868 Shonesburg was resettled by some of those who had been there before and others. Following resettlement, a windlass was built up over the ledge at the head of narrow Shonesburg canyon to take the mail up and down the mountain without climbing the trail. Mail carriers were hired to go from Toquerville to Shonesburg Canyon and back. Lorenzo and Horace Slack, carriers at one time, would leave Toquerville Monday morning and go to Shonesburg town the first day, camping there that night. T h e next day they went up to the head of the canyon, a distance of about four miles. They ran the mail up the windlass, took the K a n a b mail that came down the windlass, and went back to Shonesburg for the night. T h e next day they returned to Toquerville. They made twro mail trips a week, not working on Sunday, of course. When high water prevented crossing the river, as it did for about a month every spring, they stationed someone on both sides and ran the mail across on a wire. A mule was used to pack the mail, with an alforja on each side of the saddle to hold the mail. Shonesburg's main street was not very long. It went up on the hill south of the cemetery. T h e fences were made with big Cottonwood logs, so big they had to be put into place with oxen. Most of the houses were made of adobe or logs. T h e Alma Millett home was made of rock. T h e only public building in Shonesburg was the old log schoolhouse built about 1870. Measuring fourteen-by-twenty-two feet and constructed of 3

Issa Stapley, DeMille Family History and Genealogy (1953), p. 160.

Oliver DeMille, Sr., and his wife Emily Alrnina Beat with their

family.

cottonwood logs with a board floor and roof, it was used for all public purposes, including church services. Prior to 1866 there was no ward organization at Shonesburg, so the people went to Rockville when they could for services. After the Indian trouble, enough people went back to Shonesburg to organize a branch of the church. Oliver DeMille was presiding elder; John J. Allred was Sunday School superintendent. School terms were short. Students had to work early in the spring and late into the fall, leaving only about three months for school. Olive Stevens recorded that the youngsters would set the benches back and dance before school started at 9:30 A.M. T h e schoolmaster whipped the boys with a willow if they broke the rules. After whipping two one day because they failed to come in immediately after recess, he called the third one up and every time he'd hit him it sounded like a d r u m because he had on a coat made of a goatskin with very short brown hair. T h e scholars all laughed and he laughed too. Then he said, "Now take your seat, the next time I whip you, my young man, I'll have you take that coat off first.4 Mbid., p. 145.

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T h e schoolmaster taught two weeks longer than was required but accepted no extra pay. Walt Slack was one of the teachers there. Some of the students made up a little rhyme, referring to Eagles Peak in nearby Zion's Park: An eagle flew from peak to peak Carrying Walter in his beak. When he found he was a fool He dropped him down to teach our school. 5

Brigham Young had sent the settlers to raise cotton and make wine. Oliver DeMille II wrote in his diary that their main crops were cane, corn, and cotton. They grew nearly all kinds of produce, especially watermelons. Their fruits included peaches, apples, pears, apricots, plums, and grapes, which thrived there. They grew little wheat. Ida DeMille Millett, a daughter of Oliver I, said their wheat was often cut in time to make new straw hats for the Twenty-fourth of July. Emily, Oliver's first wife, was an expert at braiding and sewing straw hats. They took their produce north and traded it for flour and potatoes. There were a few good orchards besides the small farms. Lucerne was grown in abundance. They also planted mulberry trees so they could raise silkworms. From Olive Emily DeMille Stevens came this insight into their cotton industry: I picked cotton on shares for other people after having helped pick my father's fields of cotton. People hired the Indians to pick their cotton only when they couldn't get enough white helpâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;for the Indians ran all over the fields and picked only the best and left the rest to waste. When eight years of age I picked enough cotton to come to four hundred pounds of ginned cotton for my share. In 1865 we sold our cotton to a m a n who took it to Salt Lake City and got store pay for us. I failed to ever receive all the cloth I'd ordered because his sister in Toquerville did not keep her promise to him to send it all up to Brother Oliver DeMille, my father, in Shonesburg. 0

T h e farmers used oxen for travel and work instead of horses, although some had one team of horses for nice occasions. Oliver II said, " W h e n I was just a young fellow, father told my brother and me that we could break a couple of oxen he had to work; that was the most sport I ever had." Interview with Merrill Hall, June 20, 1975, Hurricane, Utah. Stapley, DeMille Family, p. 145.

Shonesburg

T h e usable farmland ranged from about four miles up the river from town to two miles below. T h e land was fertile and these Saints lived in peace and prosperity, for those times, through laboring hard together. Day-by-day life was h a r d ; nevertheless, they were almost self-sustaining. Some_ «j*y ; m jSjflBkXs • * 5 times they had to grind the cane seed up to make flour for bread. T h e women and girls corded, spun, and wove the raw cotton into cloth, then made their own clothes by hand because they had / no machines. T h e smaller children were used to pick the seeds out of the cotton after it was "%r •;' , . . „ * . , " S - >-• ** brought in from the fields. When Olive DeMille was nine, she wove a yard of cloth out Oliver DeMille, Sr.t and his second wife, of which her Aunt Jane made her Fidelia Winget, and their family. a sacque or blouse. She wrote, " I earned me a fashionable pair of hoops and circle bomb by gleaning wheat from Father's field and threshing it with a flail. T h e n Father bought me a beautiful maroon dress." 7 In the spring, spinning bees were held and all the girls were invited along with the women. Olive won a prize one day for spinning the most cloth. T h e women colored the cloth they made with dock root for a brown color, rabbit brush for yellow, indigo for blue, and madder that grew in the orchard for red. Sometimes they made striped or checked cloth with black wool. Rachel Hirschi, a daughter of Oscar DeMille who was born in Shonesburg, still remembers their homemade "shuck cakes." They shucked the corn and put the husks in a tick or mattress that they called shuck cakes. Their beds were fastened to the corners of the house with wooden pegs for stands. <a

<m %N?1'

1 *

Ibid. P- 146.

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T h e people of Shonesburg had large families, with just midwives to help. Several women died in childbirth. Doctors were scarce in small pioneer settlements and Shonesburg did not boast of such a luxury. Home remedies were used. Some of the women became quite famous in the settlements for their skills as midwives and nurses. A rattlesnake bit one oldtimer, and his wife, a pioneer nurse, took care of him. T h e Indians around could not believe he did not die. They kept coming and looking at him, saying, "Indiansâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;kill him every time. Don't kill white man." 8 Versatility was the order of the day. For example, Joseph MilOscar and Emily DeMille with their lett, Jr., was a master at basketchild Annabel. making. Using willows from above Shonesburg, he made many baskets to sell, then later taught others how. If things were not going quite right, Millett found temporary escape from worldly pressures by going up the river to make baskets. Whatever his reasons, he was very proficient. H e was a carpenter by trade, a good blacksmith, mason, farmer, casketmaker, and shoemaker. He made shoes by hand for all of his older children. H e also made chairs from ash trees and carved vases from wood. He had beautiful penmanship, was an artist, poet, and violinist, and made brooms and barrels. In addition, he held many community positions. Sometime around 1880 Oliver DeMille and his family moved into their large rock house on the hill, a two-story, solid rock dwelling. Each of the wives had her own apartment and fireplace. O n the upper floor was a large room where dances were held, with space for three sets of quadrilles. Wagons full of people came from nearby towns for the dances and socials held at DeMilles'. T h e house commanded a view of the surrounding country, an important consideration because of the Indians. T h e hill was also consid8

Interview with Thora Dennett DeMille, June 24, 1975, Rockville, Utah.

Shonesburg

Joseph Millett, Jr., and his wife Orpha DeMille. Joseph, noted for his skill as a mason, helped to build Oliver DeMille's rock house.

ered a more healthy spot than the valley because there was a breeze to keep the mosquitoes away. Some have said that Oliver DeMille's sons did not want the house built on that hill, so they refused to help. One day the workers needed some rock, so Christian Larson went to the edge of the hill and called to one of Oliver's sons to bring the team up. H e said Joe Millett had broken his leg. After hurrying up the hill with team and wagon, the boy was chagrined to find that there had been no accidentâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;he was just wanted to haul rock. Joseph Millett, Jr., did the masonry, with Christian Larson helping on the carpenter work. T h e care taken in setting the cut stones into place, the decorative molding along the eaves of the house, and the stone work on the chimney show the skill of the Millett family. Theirs was an artistic endeavor as well as a practical task of building a sturdy home. T h e DeMille house was never completely finished the way Oliver planned. A water ditch was taken out four miles above the town and Oliver intended to bring the water up the hill to his house. This was never accomplished, and their water was brought to them in a big barrel fastened to a dray or sled made from a Y-shaped fork from a cotton-

56*

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wood tree with a plank across it. They were then ready to drag their barrels of drinking water up the hill to the house. Si Gifford, as a child of four or five, was up at Shonesburg with his father. Being very thirsty, he went to the water barrel at the end of the rock house. He was just starting to drink when Oliver's wife Amina called from the window, "Are ya sure your face is clean?" Si thought the DeMilles were very fussy. Brigham Young stayed at the home of Oliver DeMille from time to time. Oliver II recorded, "Whenever Brigham Young came to town, which was once a year, he always stopped to our place. He was a fine man. Everybody thought a lot of him. H e was friendly to everybody's children, and all." One time when the church president visited, the little girls dressed in white and carried flowers, the boys dressed in their best, and with their drums and fife they met and welcomed Brother Young and his company. T h e early Dixie settlers had a cultural life uniquely their own, a compromise between what they would have liked or had known before and what was within their grasp in their new homes. Very few celebrations were held in Shonesburg; the people usually went to Rockville or other early settlements for holidays. May Day was one of the great days for the children, filled with trips to other towns or the canyons. They took their lunches, made swings, and played games. What they lacked in the form of formal culture was made up for with their informal good times. It was hard to get around and there were not a lot of exciting things to do, so they entertained themselves. In the evening, the folk congregated to sing and entertain each other. Many of them played the harmonica. Someone would start playing and singing; soon the whole town would be there listening, singing, and dancing. Shonesburg was known for good dances. Folk came from several neighboring towns, even as far as Virgin, for the dances at DeMille's rock house. Good musicians were very important to the people. Walter Stringham played the violin and sang. Byron Millett was a favorite banjo player. Dock Kenner, Jim Thaxton, and Christian Larson were other good violin players. These fiddlers were paid in produce (or whatever the people had) for providing the dance music. Almost everyone who remembers their parents' or grandparents' talking about the dances mentions that the Shonesburg folk danced barefooted. One night before a dance in Shonesburg, the women became angry with the men and refused to dance. So the men proceeded to have their own dance; some of them dressed up as women. A song was made up

Shonesburg

about this occasion. It became a favorite and has been passed down through the years: O Walt was to fiddle Sam was to call While pickin the banjo T o have a fine ball. O there was Jim Saxton He's a fine little lad. He put on a dress T o dance with his dad. Horray! Horrah! T h e boys indeed They found very much T h e girls they did need. 9

When Shonesburg was first settled, the river ran in a deep, narrow channel; there was farmland on both sides. Year by year floods came and washed away more and more land. Although the people were extremely s

Interview with Rachel DeMille Hirschi, June 24, 1975, Rockville, Utah.

Froiseth's 1878 map of Utah shows the location of Shonesburg. Historical Society collections.

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hard workers, they could not control the waters of the Rio Virgin. One family after another left as their farms were washed away. At one time many settlers had moved away from Rockville, so the Shonesburg people bought their places. Finally there were just a few small farms left in Shonesburg; it was harder than ever to get along. T h e year 1897 was the last there were enough children to hold school. By 1900 everyone was gone except Oliver DeMille and his children. Years before, Oliver had wanted to move away but Brigham Young had told him to stay, saying the day would come when there would be a family for every acre of land. Oliver was obedient to counsel. Conditions did not get any better, but the floods did wash away enough land that finally there was a family for every acre left. After forty-one years of struggle, the DeMilles moved to Rockville in 1902 where they went into the mercantile business with a dry goods and grocery store. This industrious man who had been a prominent figure in Shonesburg throughout its history was the last to leave. T h e little town of Shonesburg is no more. What remains of the once-thriving community is now privately owned farmland without public access. Most of the original townsite has been washed away; a few chimneys and ruins mark the spot. T h e solitary stone house on the hill overlooks the desolate scene. Below the Rio Virgin winds along its wray, the final victor.

<**" *â&#x20AC;˘*!:â&#x20AC;˘ .

SK-*: f4'^

Behind the DeMille home stands a tin-lined corn crib in almost perfect condition.

William Henry Smart: Uinta Basin Pioneer Leader BY K R I S T E N S M A R T ROGERS

William Henry Smart. Photographs furnished by the author. V J L D BALDY?"

him!"

accompanying

this article were

the elderly statesman grinned. "Of course I remember

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No wonder. What old-timer of the Uinta Basin would not remember that austere countenance? Those steely eyes peering out of wire spectacles had shaken the soul of many a sinner. With that imperious beak-like nose and that tight-lipped, unsmiling mouth, the stake president commanded respect. If old-timers refer to him now as "Old Baldy," it is only because they can safely say it behind his forty-two-years-dead back. Stern expression, unwavering eyes: this description does no wrong to William Henry Smart, for he was a severe man. It was a severity, however, born of a quality that characterized the building of U t a h and made it unique among western states: an absolute, single-minded, selfless devotion to a cause. Because of that devotion, there's a difference in the way Utah was built. One sees it in its towns, even today: towns built uniformly to a plan, with straight, tree-lined streets, square blocks, and standard-sized lots large enough for lawns, garden, and outbuildings; towns located not haphazardly where individual whim or fortune might dictate, but where, despite obstacles sometimes bordering on the hopeless, leaders in Salt Lake City felt they would serve the broader ends of the larger society. It took severe, disciplined, dedicated men to build like that. William H. Smart was a classic example of such a man. His lifetime work in organizing and leading the settlement of the Uinta Basin offers a case study in how so much of U t a h was built: through unquestioning obedience to higher authority and through tremendously energetic and farvisioned efforts, not for personal gain but for the long-range good of the communities he was building. T h e source of such dedication was simple and strong. Smart, like so many others, was single-mindedly devoted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and to its leaders. With this devotion came a conviction that he was destined to be an instrument for special service to the church. Burdened with this conviction, Smart began in his early twenties the keeping of a journal that he maintained throughout his life and that reached, at his death, forty-seven finely written volumes, and it is chiefly from this source that his remarkable life of service to the Uinta Basin is traced. As the pages of his journal make so poignantly clear, Smart's whole life seems to have centered around service to and sacrifice for his religion. Mrs. Rogers, a Brigham Young University graduate, is a great-granddaughter of William Henry Smart. This paper was awarded first prize in the 1976 Utah Bicentennial Biographies Contest, amateur class, jointly sponsored by the Utah State Historical Society, the Salt Lake Tribune and the Utah American Revolution Bicentennial Commission.

William Henry Smart

His early years were ones of conflict between the flesh and the spirit of obedience. Time after time, the young m a n struggled to rid himself of his greatest weaknessâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;tobacco. Time after time, the flesh would conquer, and the battle would be agonizingly renewed. During a proselyting mission to Turkeyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;itself a sacrifice involving leaving a pregnant bride and being himself plagued by illnessâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;young Will Smart wrote in mental agony, ". . . sometimes I have become so utterly hopeless in overcoming smoking and thus rendered so despondent that I have sat hours and smoked one cigarette after another." And again the next day: "Being out of tobacco I made another resolve to refrain. I walked down to the grove, met a shepherd and broke my resolution in buying 10 para worth." H e did finally conquer the habit in accordance with his desires, for, as he stated, "from my youth I have had an intense desire to work righteousness." 1 In sacrificing the weed on the altar of his devotion to the church commandments, Smart set the pattern for larger sacrifices that would characterize the rest of his life. How hard it might be for some to give u p a lucrative business to move, at the call of church authorities, to a fresh and uncertain start in a place like Heber City. Smart, upon being called to be stake president there, never hesitated. H e gave up interest in the highly successful Smart and Webster Livestock Company in Cache Valley and southern Idaho, a business he himself had formed and developed, and moved his family to Heber in 1901. It was as president of the Wasatch Stake that Smart first envisioned his future in the Uinta Basin. Smart's association with the Basin was triggered by a broken treaty. At the turn of the century, the insatiable land hunger of western settlers began to focus on the Uinta Basin with a growing clamor that the government throw open the Uintah Indian Reservation to white settlement. T h e real drama of the situation lay not in still another breach of faith by the United States government, but in the conflict that the reservation opening was to cause between the ever-bickering factions of Mormons and non-Mormons. Friction between the two groups was already intense when into the arena stepped William H. Smart, fervent supporter of the church hierarchy and hard-nosed believer in the ultimate triumph of the Mormon kingdom. As president of the LDS Wasatch Stake centered in Heber "Journals of William Henry Smart, vol. 6A, August 27 and 28, 1889, Western Americana, Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

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City, he actually held ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the reservation lands. Accordingly, he made a personal tour in 1903, inspecting the entire area on horseback. His heart must have been captured during that trip, for his journal records premonitions of a future involvement with the Basin. Finding seclusion in a grove of aspens at the summit between Heber Valley and the Uinta Basin, he petitioned that God whom he so often sought in prayer. "I was filled with peculiar feelings as I knelt down to pray here on the divide between the known and unknown country," he wrote, "and somehow I felt a responsibility ahead of me. I prayed for light and wisdom for the tour in the country."" Smart's own emotions at this moment were to mold his destiny as colonizer, promoter, and administrator of the Uinta Basin. Undisguisedly enthusiastic, Smart reported to his superior, church president Joseph F. Smith, recommending that the church be ready for action when the rush for reservation lands began. Upon President Smith's approval, this frail stake president, throughout his life subject to poor health, went to work with energy. He made more trips in the Basin. H e chose townsites. He charted irrigation systems. H e had the soil tested. He did everything possible to prepare for a successful Mormon invasion and occupation. Yet for all this, he modestly wrote President Smith that he himself did not wish to "steady the Ark," only to do his small part under the direction of the church.' Smart in fact did not steady the Ark; instead, he practically sank it. H e had formed the Wasatch Development Company, designed to prevent land-grabbing by "sharks" (the non-Mormon variety) and to establish what he frequently referred to as "our people" on the reservation lands. 1 T h e operation was innocent enough, and so was Smart. Unfortunately, he was also naive. He wrote letters to stake presidents and bishops throughout U t a h asking for information on prospective settlers and hinting that the Wasatch Stake presidency could be of great assistance. T h e form letter read: "We are acquainting ourselves with tracts of land which we feel are most desirable for settlement, and which, through land 2

Ibid., vol. 12, September 3, 1903, p. 89. Tbid., vol. 13, May 12, 1904, p. 168; Uintah Stake History, Manuscript History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ( # 9 4 9 3 ) , Historical Department, Archives Division, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City; Smart to Smith, November 16, 1904, p. 1, Joseph F. Smith Correspondence, LDS Archives. 4 Smart to Smith, p. 6.

William Henry Smart

office connections being formed by us, can be chosen by those who may be in touch with us."" At this, Mormon-Gentile antagonisms flared. "Land-grabbing!" and "Illegal dealings!" were only two of the epithets hurled at bewildered church authorities. In the heat of the battle, President Smart stoutly, but vainly, explained that the intention behind the letter was innocent. Before the matter cooled down, Smart had been called "insane" by Apostle John Henry Smith, Joseph F. Smith had been accused of being involved in the land grab, and federal land commissioner W. A. Richards had made a personal investigation. Overzealous, anxious Smart had, like a child whose helpfulness is often a hindrance, "helped" the church in an embarrassing way. 0 Despite the chagrin he must have felt, Smart was eager to oversee work in the Uinta Basin. In a letter to the First Presidency recommending that the reservation lands be reassigned to the Uintah Stake centered in Vernal, he further suggested that the Uintah Stake administration be changed to provide more dynamic leadership in these crucial times. After recommending a good man to succeed himself in the Wasatch Stake, Smart modestly declared his willingness to serve in any position. Fortunately for the Uinta Basin, Smart's thinly veiled hopes were realized, for in 1906 church authorities enlarged the Uintah Stake to include the reservation, and Smart was made president.' W h a t must have been his motivation for aspiring to his new office? Was it power? O r wealth? O r was it merely a need for a more challenging part in building the kingdom? T h e question is crucial to an evaluation of the integrity of Smart's lifework. T h e answer lies in the work itself. Having lured Mormon homesteaders to the Basin and seen to it that they had a worthy leader, Smart set about the task of colonizing the country in an orderly fashion. After consulting with the ever-omnipotent First Presidency, Smart organized four realty companies to finance and control Mormon land investments. They were unabashedly Mormon, as stake presidency and high council members made up the directors, while at the helm of it all was President Smart, without whose approval nothing could be done. 8 5

Smart to LDS stake presidents, June 7, 1905. "Salt Lake Tribune, July 2, 1905. 7 Smart to Smith; Uintah Stake History. "Smart journals, vol. 17, November 26, 1906, pp. 14-15.

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Smart.

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Smart.

It was appropriate that Smart should have control, for the operations were financed out of his own pocket. T h e investment was not for personal profit; Smart was completely dedicated to "building the kingdom." These realty companies, like his energy, time, and talents, were consecrated to that purpose. H e donated so much of his personal money to these and similar projects that, although he arrived in the Basin a wealthy man, he left twenty-eight years later almost penniless. In the early years, Smart was president of the colonizing companies, but he later turned the responsibility over to others. H e confessed that he did not want the burdens of direct responsibility and that he was satisfied to hold only an advisory position. 9 Of course, as it turned out, the company directors could not very well refuse the advice of God's chosen servant, especially when that servant was as strict and uncompromising as William Smart. T h e new Uintah Stake administration thus occupied itself in settling people on the virgin lands and obtaining for them irrigation systems and water rights. Through it all, he constantly sought and followed the counsel of President Joseph F. Smith to whom he felt particularly close. T h e Tbid., January 17, 1909, p. 40, and vol. 19, March 3, 1910, p. 127, illustrate this.

William Henry Smart

night of the Mormon leader's death, in fact, family members heard Smart pacing his room for hours. Thinking that their father's grief was overwhelming, they consoled him the next morning, only to discover that Smart had been mourning, not for the prophet, but for the church under the leadership of Heber J. Grant. 10 Despite misgivings, however, Smart never swerved in loyalty to the new church president, any more than to the old. It was his very character that he uphold his leaders as divinely appointed, and this he always did. So it was that when Joseph F. Smith in 1907 advised the new settlers to gather together into towns, Smart threw himself unreservedly into the work. So deeply committed was he to the building of towns that he often neglected his family to explore the Basin in his familiar white-topped buggy, seeking out and comparing possible townsites. This to him was a spiritual mission in that townsites should be chosen with an eye to the Lord's will and not to temporal gain. 11 "I endeavor to approach all these matters in the spirit of what always appears best for the public good," he wrote. "But I cannot say that I always succeed." 12 Even town names should please the Lord, reasoned Smart; for instance, he felt the name Myton, so called after a disreputable Indian agent, should be changed. 1 ' Towns and all that pertained to them were to Smart an important part of the Mormon kingdom in the Basin. T h e great expectations Smart had of these tiny towns seem ludicrous today. Despite the remoteness, poverty, and aridity of the Uinta Basin, this m a n always thought of it as a vital and potentially powerful part of the U t a h empire. T o him, each town was a future center of culture and commerceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;temporally great and spiritually pure. T h e time and thought Smart devoted to choosing a site for a Mormon temple that never has materialized illustrates his zeal. Even the dusty town of Ouray merited his attention as a possible temple city.14 Instead of progressing, most of the Uinta Basin towns have remained much as they were in the days of this energetic stake president. Still, Smart's over-optimism was, in part, what enabled him to accomplish so much. Without such faith, how could he have freely given so much to such a hopeless cause? If the Uinta Basin did not measure up to his vision of it, still, it became through his

"Reminiscences of Thomas Lawrence Smart, Western Americana. "Smart journals, vol. 31, February 21, 1918, p. 118, and vol. 16, May 16, 1906, p. 125. 12 Ibid., vol. 25, October 25, 1912, p. 16. "Smart to First Presidency, September 17, 1905, Joseph F. Smith Correspondence. "Smart journals, vol. 21, January 13, 1911.

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efforts an important, if not prosperous, eastern anchor of the Mormon empire. As settlers began to fill reservation lands and townsites, Smart saw the need to modernize and commercialize the embryo communities. Adding to his rigorous stake duties, he took an active role in public affairs by organizing and financing needed businesses and civic enterprises. His motive was still the same: to strengthen the church. " M u c h to the discredit of the basin," wrote Smart to President Smith, nonMormons had become prominent and powerful. 1 ' Thus, moving in as representative for the church, Smart set about obtaining greater financial power and influence for Mormons, as well as improving living conditions for all. Smart's early moves to change the power structure were deliberately and exclusively Mormon. For example, a meeting of his newiy formed Uintah Telephone Company, created in 1907 to bring the first telephones to the Basin, might as well have been a stake high council meeting. It was generally the same with other ventures: the flour mill, electric power plant, Vernal water works, Vernal amusement hall (for "moral" entertainment of youth), and agricultural experiment station. All these were organized under the influence of the Uintah Stake Presidency for the benefit of the people as determined by the Mormon leadership. 10 By 1910 Mormon settlement of the Basin had reached a point where the Uintah Stake was divided. Smart was made president of the newiy formed Duchesne Stake and moved his home to Roosevelt. After ten years, he would become president of the new Roosevelt Stake. In each case he was sent to that section of the Basin that needed the kinds of development Smart had stimulated in Vernal. In each case he repeated his organizational civic efforts. Education was one area that received much of Smart's attention. H e was responsible for the building of the Uintah Stake Academy in Vernal in 1910.17 Two years later, the W'asatch High School was opened in Roosevelt. Not only did the stake president see that the new school was complemented by a "theological seminary" to teach church doctrines, 18 but he did everything possible, including petitioning the Lord, to ensure passage of a bond proposal to erect the building. H e instructed 15

Smart to Smith, pp. 4 - 5 . "Smart journals, vol. 17. January 28, 1907. p. 44-45, and vol. 20, pp. 44-45 and September 24, 1910, pp. 174-75. "Ibid., vol. 20, September 24, 1910, pp. 174-75. ls Ibid., vol. 25, November 2, 1912, p. 18.

William

Henry Smart

his people to do the same, and in one meeting he "spoke of importance of high school bond election to be held next Saturday and expressed the thought that we should desire the will of the Lord to obtain whether for or against, and that I wished the audience to join with me in suplicating [sic] the Lord to that effect. I then knelt and presented the matter in prayer pleading with the Lord to give the victory to the side that will be best for the people—still asking that if it be possible that the affirmative be for the best." 19 T h e issue passed by a narrow margin, presumably because it was for the best. Opposition to the bond had centered in the predominantly nonMormon town of Myton, which had objected to the proposal since it had Smart's support and since the building was to be erected in Smart's insulferably pure pet town, Roosevelt. 20 Smart later supported education by promising to raise money personally to keep the floundering high school open during the hard years of 1920-21. He succeeded, although the debt he incurred plagued him for years afterward. 21 William H. Smart was a man of action, an organizer, a dedicated worker in all worthy causes, as can be seen. Yet his influence did not stop at a few schools and modern utilities. In every way, Smart was determined to establish Mormon rule in the Basin. From a stalwart Mormon leader's point of view, the Uinta Basin was a dangerous place in the early 1900s. Here, isolated from church headquarters and surrounded by influential anti-Mormons, a church member might easily slip into inactivity or be subverted by ideas in conflict with official doctrine. Deliberating on the problem, Smart decided that he must employ all forms of influence to combat worldly doctrines. Accordingly, he began to buy up and form newspapers which he, as ecclesiastical authority in the Basin, could control. Smart felt firmly—and rightly—that the press could be an instrument for good or bad. An election in Vernal on Prohibition had been lost, he complained, because of propaganda in the Vernal Express.22 Shortly after the election, in 1910, he bought the paper through his Uintah Realty and Investment Company. T h e paper was placed in the church's hands because, in Smart's eyes, "the Lord is moving in these things." 2 " In the matter of newspapers, as in all other affairs, devout 19

Ibid., vol. 27, February 1, 1914, p. 111. -°Ibid., February 7, 1917, pp. 117-18. 2, Ibid., vol. 33, February 25, 1921, p. 109; and vol. 34, April 17, 1923, p. 127. -2Ibid.', vol. 19, March 8, 1910, p. 140.

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Smart acknowledged his Maker's h a n d : " I thank the Lord for his preserving power and give H i m glory for all the good done, and will share the blame with the Prince of darkness for the rest." 24 Subsequently, the Lord apparently saw fit to establish church newspapers in the prominent towns of Roosevelt and Theodore (Duchesne) in the forms of the financially disastrous Uintah Advocate, renamed the Standard, and the Duchesne Messenger. Next in line was the notoriously Gentile Myton, where the Uintah Chieftain, a liberal Socialist paper, had appeared in 1908. 25 T o Republican Smart, of course, the Chieftain was intolerable. H e bought the p a p e r in 1909. Always, Smart was guided by prayer. It was only after consulting with deity that he decided to consolidate these three mediocre papers. " O n e good paper will be better t h a n three poor ones," he reasoned and, after some negotiating, the consolidation was accomplished in 1910. T h e Duchesne Record, as the p a p e r was called, was published at Myton. 26 With these combined forces, M o r m o n control must surely have been strengthened. Smart was not oblivious, however, to the many non-Mormons who would be affected. W h a t he did, he wrote, was "for the good of the whole country and for all people." 2 7 In his own mind at least, he built church power not for clannish reasons, but because he sincerely felt it would benefit both m e m b e r and nonmember. T h e energy and talent Smart devoted to the Basin people seem almost unlimited. H e even edited the Record himself for a period. I n this case, however, he was motivated by a dwindling bank account. All the years of his work in the Basin, he had been, in effect, unemployed, living mostly off his savings. Now he needed some income. Before he could earn m u c h as editor, though, he again, characteristically, sacrificed his own interests for the sake of the church. Understandably, Smart's prominence in public affairs h a d aroused opposition and enemies; therefore, he thought it best to retire after less than a year of editing lest his influence as stake president be weakened. T h e abdication was only for appearance, as the ubiquitous Smart continued to control the paper's business and editorial policies. 28 28

Ibid., March 6, 1910, pp. 134-35. Ibid., vol. 20, May 11, 1910, p. 3. "Mildred Miles Dillman, Early History of Duchesne County (Springville, U t . : Art City Publishing Co., 1948), p. 303. -"Smart journals, vol. 19, April 29, 1910, pp. 201-2. 2, Ibid., vol. 20, May 1, 1910, p. 3. 28 Ibid., vol. 27, April 17, 1914, p. 177, and April 21, 1914, p. 183. 24

William

Henry Sin art

Perhaps no other area better illustrates Smart's personality, his motivation, and his methods than that of banking. Just as his people needed the moral support newspapers could provide, Smart realized they required financial support in their efforts to subdue and civilize the Basin. He saw to it that citizens' banks, owned and managed by local people, were established. T h e first of these was to be in Vernal. Originally owned by Coloradoan non-Mormons, the local bank had been a thorn in Smart's side since his advent into the Basin. When in 1910 certain citizens announced plans to promote a new bank, Smart made his move, reasoning that it was "the trials and hardships and privations and labors of the pioneer stock in the last quarter century that had made banking even possible and I concluded that this was the stock to have something to say about banking and . . . they would have a say." 29 Whether or not the pioneer stock wanted their say, Smart set out to obtain it for them. His method was to take aside one of the bank's promoters, Edward Samuels, and appeal to his spiritual nature. Samuels was a Mormon, but inactive, and Smart sought to help him see the error of his ways: When I showed him how our people were being used as tools for accomplishment of their promoters' ends it opened his eyes and he very much moved. He said he wished I had not showed to him his sponsibility but now I could depend on him to do what he could. . .

the felt re." 30

As a result, the formerly unfriendly bank directors asked Smart to dispose of three-fifths of the stock, to join the board of directors, and to become bank president. 31 Certainly Smart must have had a way with words. Unfortunately for the new Uintah State Bank, Smart was soon called to the presidency of the Roosevelt Stake, which did not encompass Vernal. T h e president's efforts immediately focused on his new area of jurisdiction, and he supervised the formation of a new bank in Roosevelt. Yet he kept himself from active participation, even though he was urged to become president, fearing that his own prominence might arouse opposition and thus undermine his other duties. His "mission," as he saw it, was not to become wealthy or financially influential, but to help others. 32 2a

Ibid., vol. 19, February 11, 1910, pp. 92-102. Ibid., pp. 99-100. 31 Ibid., February 19, 1910, p. 117, and February 26, 1910, p. 120. 32 Ibid., vol. 22, July 20, 1911, p. 167, and vol. 27, May 12, 1914, p. 196.

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In 1920 the Roosevelt bank was on the verge of collapse. Smart tried to secure a loan but found it impossible. Next he asked his wealthy brother T h o m a s to help the struggling bank but was refused. When William H. Smart met failure, nothing else could be done, and the bank was closed. Smart had hated to neglect his other duties to rescue a failing bank, but he felt an obligation to his people, expressed in a letter to T h o m a s : Just when I should be devoting all my time to other matters . . . I am compelled to leave my duties to answer the cry of my helpless people to help save them from financial drowning in the waters of this bank. Regardless of their mistakes, what can one do before the cries of a helpless and dependent child but make an effort to respond?' 55

T h e statement may have been flowery, but it was no exaggeration. Smart h a d so thoroughly taken over public affairs in the Uinta Basin that the people automatically turned to him in times of stress. They knew he would bear their financial losses if he could; in fact, he would do anything to prevent the failure of the Lord's work. Perhaps Smart's idealism was used against him in this way. Again, in the formation of a new Roosevelt bank, it was Smart who took charge. H e sold the stock, allowing Coloradoans to carry the majority because of the Basin's financial weakness, and got a loan from U t a h State Bank using personal collateral. 14 With the bank back on its feetâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;-but out of Mormon controlâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Smart turned to other matters: chiefly that of buying a bank in Duchesne. Actually, in 1920 a new stake president had been assigned to the Duchesne area, so Smart had no direct interest in the bank there. H e had, however, been trying since 1914, the time of the county division, to promote a citizens' bank in Duchesne. T h a t bank had never been formed, but an outside bank, headed by D. L. Dean, had served the town. 35 It was this bank that Smart now had a chance to control. Dean, anxious to return to his Kansas homeland, was selling his stock in the Duchesne Bank. After negotiation, Smart was able to buy 100 shares for $15,000, which he promptly sold to others. H e had procured a loan from U t a h State Bank to aid others in buying the stock. Once more Smart succored the citizens of the Basin by obtaining a bank for the people. And he insisted that the institution be connected with the 3

Ibid., vol. 32, July 26, 1920, p. 367. Ibid., vol. 33, September 11, 1920, p. 4, and vol. 32, July 26, 1920, p. 365. 5 Ibid., vol. 33, September 13, 1920, p. 6.

William

Henry

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L D S bank in Salt Lake. !G It seemed that another t r i u m p h for the kingdom was assured. F a t e â&#x20AC;&#x201D; o r the Lord's willâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;would have it otherwise. Within a year the bank h a d closed its doors. Although Smart never explained in his journals why the bank failed, his son T h o m a s L a w r e n c e Smart, at the time a grown m a n , claims that D e a n h a d tricked the buyers by borrowing some securities a n d bonds which he returned after the sale of the bank. W h e n the bank examiner c a m e a r o u n d later, he declared the bank bankrupt. S m a r t was stuck, therefore, with the staggering task of getting the stockholders to pay off the loan he h a d procured for them. In m a n y cases, he himself was forced to pay, which he did by selling his stock in the U t a h State Bank and the Beneficial Life Insurance Company. 3 7 After all, as he said, "dollars must not stand between me and my brethren." 1 Money h a d never stood between William S m a r t and his people. H e gave freely of his material wealth, as well as his time and best thought. For the sixteen years of his presidency in the Basin, the focus of his life was to build in that region an acceptable, holy stake of Zion. His ultim a t e goal was to train his people to "finally stand the government of God wherein H e shall stand at the h e a d of all both spiritual a n d secular." 1 As far as the church was concerned, no other could have filled the time a n d place so well, as a stake associate remarked at the time of Smart's release in 1922. 10 S m a r t expressed no regret at being released from his influential position but said to his associates, " I would rather serve as a doorkeeper in God's House t h a n to sit upon the greatest regal throne." 4 1 H e further wrote privately at the time, " m a y our Father's blessings be upon all that has been done, a n d m a y I be blessed not to return to inactivity but that in the own way of the Lord be able to be active throughout my days." 4 2 H e did remain active, of course; such a m a n could not sit back uselessly. H e served in the state legislature a n d even fulfilled another mission for the church. Eventually moving to Salt Lake, he lived out his days in respectable poverty, still serving the Lord as a temple workerâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; almost a "doorkeeper in God's House." 36

Ibid., October 12, 1920, pp. 3 1 - 3 2 , and September 14, 1920, p. 7.

Ibid., January 13, 1923, p . 113.

Ibid., April 27, 1922, p. 40. Ibid., vol. 33, September 14, 1920, p. 7.

Ibid., vol. 34, June 16, 1922, pp. 55-56.

Ibid., p. 59.

"Ibid., p. 62.

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O n e can picture the old man—still very stern and forbidding, especially to his g r a n d c h i l d r e n — a s he strictly m a i n t a i n e d his own peculiar m o d e of life. H e continued to take long walks, usually climbing Ensign Peak, where he built an altar and spent his time in meditation and prayer. H e continued his habit of lengthy fasting, broken only with a little b r e a d and milk. H e continued other idiosyncracies, such as the forbidding of pickles in his household. A n d he continued true to his faith a n d religion. It was, appropriately, while serving in the temple that he was stricken with the pleurisy t h a t took his life in 1937. So left this life, at age seventy-five, a remarkable m a n whose work so characterized the h a r d , self-sacrificing pioneering that went on in U t a h long after the so-called pioneering period was ended. T h o u g h few remain w h o realize i t — t h e old-timers are about gone—the U i n t a Basin, u n d e r the veneer of its m o d e r n oil boom, bears unmistakably the s t a m p of his labors. P u t t i n g his trust in the Lord and in the General Authorities, William H . S m a r t h a d set out to claim the U i n t a Basin for the L D S c h u r c h a n d in the process h a d himself become a powerful influence in "all both spiritual a n d secular."

The Making of Saints: The Mormon Town as a Setting for the Study of Cultural Change BY DEAN L. MAY

Aerial panorama of Ogden shows an evolved Utah townscape. Utah Historical Society collections, U. S. Forest Service photograph.

State

I 4 ATE IN 1852 M O R M O N apostles Erastus Snow and Franklin D. Richards traveled to the remote frontier settlement of Cedar City, Utah, to check on the progress of missionaries who for a year had been attempting with little success to develop an iron industry in response to a call from BrigDr. May is senior research historian, Historical Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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h a m Young. Snow's report to the Deseret News on the progress of the mission was optimistic, but indicated that his hopes for the community went well beyond success in the smelting of iron. " W e found a Scotch party, a Welch party, an English party and an American party," he wrote, "and we turned Iron Masters and undertook to put all these parties through the furnace, and run out a party of Saints for building up the Kingdom of God." 1 Brigham Young often sought to counter the materialistic appeal of California by insisting to his followers that the less fertile Great Basin was "a good place to make Saints." H e illustrated his point on one occasion with a powerful metaphor that compared the incoming population to clay on a potter's wheel, men who "have got to be ground over and worked on the table, until they are made perfectly pliable and in readiness to be put on the wheel, to be turned into vessels of honor." 2 These are typical of many expressions of Mormon leaders in the nineteenth century, indicating that the paramount task they set for themselves in their new environment w^as a social oneâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;building the heterogeneous harvest of converts arriving each fall from all parts of western Europe and the United States into a unified, harmonious, orderly community. More important than reducing the rich ores of Cedar City to sorely needed strap iron and nails was the task of putting the disparate crew of workers "through the furnace" that they might emerge "a party of Saints for building up the Kingdom of God." Also typical of the Mormons was the fact that such regeneration was not entrusted solely to the workings of God's spirit upon the prepared heart of the faithful. An intricate network of offices and institutions was devised, limiting opportunities for backsliding and antisocial behavior, constraining the convert with strong filaments of obligation and association, leading him unremittingly along the strait path towards Sainthood. Central to these purposes was the doctrine of the gathering, a concept which since Joseph Smith's time meant moving not just to a locality but into a compact town or village where a community of the faithful was established. It was "the duty of the brethren," the prophet said in 1838, "to come into cities to build and live, and carry on their farms out of the cities, according to the order of God." T h e community accordingly be"Deseret News, December 25, 1852. "'Sermon of Brigham Young, August 17, 1856, in Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (London. 1856-86), 4 : 32, 23. 3 Joseph Smith, Jr., History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ed., B. H. Roberts, 7 vols., 2d ed. rev. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1949). 3 : 56.

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came for M o r m o n s the nexus of those institutions that were to be active agenis in the building of Saints. Asked in 1882 if it would be p r o p e r for Latter-day Saints to settle on individual farmsteads, President J o h n Taylor explained t h a t : In all cases in m a k i n g new settlements the Saints should be advised to gather together in villages, as has been our custom from the time of our earliest settlement in these m o u n t a i n valleys. T h e advantages of this plan, instead of carelessly scattering out over a wide extent of country, are m a n y and obvious to all those w h o have a desire to serve the Lord. By this means the people can retain their ecclesiastical organizations, have regular meetings of the q u o r u m s of the priesthood, a n d establish a n d m a i n t a i n day and Sunday schools, I m p r o v e m e n t Associations, a n d Relief Societies. T h e y can also cooperate for the good of all in financial and secular matters, in m a k i n g ditches, fencing fields, building bridges, and other necessary improvements. F u r t h e r t h a n this they are a m u t u a l protection and a source of strength against horse a n d cattle thieves, land jumpers, etc., and against hostile Indians, should there be a n y ; while their c o m p a c t organization gives t h e m m a n y advantages of a social a n d civic c h a r a c t e r which m i g h t be lost, misapplied or frittered away by spreading out so thinly t h a t inter-communication is difficult, dangerous, inconvenient and expensive. 4

So persistent were the forces p e r p e t u a t i n g this form of settlement that in 1937, nearly a century after initial settlement of the Salt Lake Valley, M o r m o n settlers near M a l t a , I d a h o , founded a new community according to the traditional pattern. 5 I n m a n y respects the M o r m o n town has been unlike other western towns; a n d although popular local histories abound, detailed historical studies of the possible influences of town life in giving a distinctive shape to M o r m o n society are rare. D u r i n g the last decade historians have applied new methods to the study of community life in colonial N e w England a n d elsewhere, greatly changing our view of early society in America. This p a p e r reviews significant past studies of the M o r m o n town a n d then describes the work of several historians w h o have applied the techniques of the " n e w social history" to N e w England towns, suggesting how their work opens i m p o r t a n t possibilities for similar studies of early M o r m o n communities. W h a t is offered here is not a finished study of M o r m o n towns but r a t h e r a proposal that m a n y such studies be done a n d a suggestion as to w h a t their p r i m a r y concerns might be. <Cited in Feramorz Y. Fox, " T h e Mormon L a n d System: A Study of the Settlement and Utilization of L a n d â&#x201E;˘ n d e r the Direction of the Mormon C h u r c h " (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1932), pp. 142-43. 6 Albert L. Seeman, "Communities in the Salt Lake Basin," Economic Geography 14 (1938) : 300-308, esp. p. 300.

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TOWN

Beginning in 1849 and continuing to the present an extensive bibliography of literature on the Mormon town has grown up. Scholars as well as authors of popular travel accounts have stressed various distinctive aspects of Mormon town life, according to their particular interests and often in response to national concerns that seemed at times to have made the Mormon experience instructive and relevant." Most of these writers were content to describe what they felt were distinctive aspects of Mormon group life, but a few went beyond this to attempt an explanation of how Mormon society evolved historically into the forms they observed. William K. Smythe, for example, an avid promoter of irrigated agriculture during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, drew ingenious••The following list is by no means comprehensive, but includes important works dealing with Mormon town life. Early travel accounts include: William Kelly, Across the Rocky Mountains ... (London. 1852); Howard Stansbury, Exploration and Survey of the Great Salt Lake . . . (Philadelphia. 1852) ; John W. Gunnison, The Mormons, or, Latter-day Saints in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake . . . (Philadelphia, 1852) : S. N. Carvalho, Incidents of Travel and Adventure in the Far West . . . (New York, 1857) ; William Chandless, A Visit to Salt Lake and ... Mormon Settlements in Utah (London, 1857): Richard F. Burton The City of the Saints . . . (New York, 1862) ; Elizabeth Wood Kane, Twelve Mormon Homes Visited in Succession on a Journey through Utah to Arizona (Philadelphia, 1874); and Philip S Robinson Sinners and Saints . . . (Boston, 1883). More scholarly observations were made in the last quarter of the nineteenth century: Dyer L). Lum, Social Problems of Today; or The Mormon Question in its Economic Aspects (Port Jervis, N. Y., 1886); Amos G. Warner, Three Phases of Cooperation in the West (BaltimoreAmerican Economic Association. 1887): Richard T. Ely. "Economic Aspects of Mormonism" Harper's Monthly Magazine 56 (1903) : 667-68; Albert E. Wilson, "Gemeinwirtschaft und Unternehmungsformen in Mormonenstaat," published in Gustov Schmoller's Jahrbuch fur GesetzGebung, Veruraltung und Volk-wirtschaft in Deutchen Reich, 39 vols. (Leipzig, 1877-1915), 31 Important twentieth century studies include: Hamilton Gardner, "Cooperation among the Mormons " Quarterly Journal of Economics 31 (1917) : 461-99; and "Communism amone the Mormons, Quarterly Journal of Economics 37 ( 1 9 2 3 ) : 137-74; all of Lowry Nelson's work published in the 1920s and 1930s was revised and published as The Mormon Village- A Pattern and Technique of Land Settlement (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press 1952) • Arden B Olsen, "The History of Mormon Mercantile Cooperation in Utah," (Ph.D diss University of California, Berkeley, 1935); Joseph Earle Spencer, "The Middle Virgin River'Valley Utah • A S, d m " y Culture Growth and Change" (Ph.D. diss., University of California Los Angeles ft„ 1936) ; James E. Hulett, Jr., "The Sociological and Social Psychological Aspects of the Mormon Polygamous Family" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1939); Lucien Gallois "Quelques Notes Sur L'Utah," Annates de Geographic 22 (1913) : 185-96; Joel E. Ricks, Forms and Methods of Early Mormon Settlement in Utah and the Surrounding Region, 1847 to 1877 (Loean U t . : Utah State University Press, 1964); Milton R. Hunter, Brigham Young the Colonizer (Independence, Mo.: Zion's Printing and Publishing Co., 1945) ; Albert L. Seeman "Communities in the Great Basin," Economic Geography 14 (1938), pp. 300-308; Nels Anderson Desert Saints: The Mormon Frontier in Utah (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1942) : D W Meiniq ' T A e Mormon Culture Region: Strategies and Patterns in the Geographv of the American West' 1847-1964," American Geographers Association Annals 55 (1965) : 191-220; Richard V Francaviglia, "The Mormon Landscape: Existence, Creation and Perception of a Unique Image in the American West" (Ph.D. diss., University of Oregon, 1970) ; Richard H. Jackson "Myth and Reality: Environmental Perception of the Mormons. 1840-1865, An Historical'Geosophy " (Ph.D. diss. Clark University, 1970); H. Lautensach. Das Mormonenland als Beispiel eines sozialgeographischen Raumes (Bonn: Im Selbstverlag des Geographischen Instituts der Universitat Bonn, 1953) ; Wayne L. Wahlquist, "Settlement Processes in the Mormon Core Area 18471890," (Ph.D. diss., University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 1974) ; Charles S. Peterson Take Up Your Mission: Mormon Colonizing along the Little Colorado River, 1870-1900 (Tucson- University of Arizona Press, 1973) ; Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958)- Fox "The Mormon Land System."

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ly upon Frederick Jackson Turner to argue that the regeneration of a decadent "gilded" America depended upon the successful development of irrigable lands in the Intermountain Westâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;America's last frontier. His model for this ideal society was the Mormon village. " U t a h as it appeared to the eye of the delegate," he wrote in 1891, after attending the first National Irrigation Congress in Salt Lake City, "is the arid region as we hope it will soon appear to the eye of the world." "If you ask me for an example of what might be accomplished in this line," a colleague, Thomas F. Walsh wrote, I point you to the irrigated valleys of U t a h . These were settled by comparatively poor men. . . . They live on small farms. They enjoy economic independence by the simple method of producing the variety of things which they consume. They live chiefly in villages and so have social advantages not usually within reach of farming communities. . . . I love to think of those green oases among the U t a h mountains. If dark hours shall ever come to the Republic, the dwellers in those lovely valleys will know nothing of it except by hearsay. 8

Evolving their own crude variation of Turnerian environmentalism, the irrigation enthusiasts concluded, as Smythe phrased it, that "the economic institutions of U t a h are the natural outgrowth of the conditions of an arid land. U t a h is the product of its environment. . . . T h e forces that have made the civilization of Utah will make the civilization of western America." 9 Though Smythe's faith in the irrigation ditch as an agent of social regeneration seems in retrospect naive and simplistic, his work was nonetheless, for its time, forward-looking and significant. H e was among the first to attempt a more or less systematic description of Mormon town life. Perhaps more importantly, he drew upon the most recent theories of social development to offer a "scientific" explanation of how, in past time, the peculiar qualities of Mormon society had emerged. More recently, several scholars have centered their work upon precisely those questions Smythe raised in the 1890s. They have attempted to describe aspects of Mormon life that are thought to set the group apart as a distinctive American subculture and to explain how this subculture emerged. T h e first, and most important of these began in 1948 when anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn and sociologist Talcot Parsons joined with others in planning a major research endeavor known as the "Comparative Study of Values in Five Cultures" project, sponsored by the 'Irrigation Age 1 (1891) : 214; also William K. Smythe, The Conquest of Arid (1899; reprint ed., Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969). "Irrigation Age 17 ( 1 9 0 2 ) : 370-71. "Smythe, Arid America, pp. 52, 56.

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Laboratory of Social Relations of Harvard University and supported by grants from the Rockefeller Foundation. Between 1949 and 1955 a veritable army of social scientists descended upon the five cultural groups occupying the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau in western NewMexico: Zuni, Navajo, Spanish, Mormon, and Texan. The Mormon village of R a m a h , named Rimrock in the publications of the project, thus became an object of intensive scrutiny. Altogether sixty-eight separate pieces were published by members of the research team, including their summary work, People of Rimrock—A Study of Values in Five Cultures, which appeared in 1966.10 One member of the team, Thomas F. O'Dea, published The Mormons in 1957, a fruit of the project that occupies in the sociology of the Mormons a position comparable to the work of Leonard J. Arrington in their economic history." T h e "Comparative Study of Values in Five Cultures" project has left us with a fascinating and detailed description of society in a Mormon village of the 1949-55 period. It is an important recent supplement to the more spare and statistical work on Mormon villages of the 1920s and 1930s by Lowry Nelson. It shares with Nelson, however, the sin of omission common to both anthropological and sociological work, a failure to examine the processes of change over time. Of scholars in these disciplines only John L. Sorenson and Mark P. Leone have sought to detail historical developments in Mormon village life. Their work, one hopes, will point the way for future students whose studies, in the aggregate, could broaden both the geographical and chronological scope of Mormon community studies. 1 " T h e work of Leone and of participants in the five cultures project supports the proposition of geographers Donald W. Meinig, Richard V. Francaviglia, and others, that there exists a Mormon culture region, dis10

Evon Z. Vogt and Ethel M. Albert, eds., People of Rimrock: A Study of Values in Five Cultures (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966). A list of the publications of project members is on pp. 299—305 of this volume. "Thomas F. O'Dea, The Mormons (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1957). Other relevant studies by sociologists are Herbert R. Larsen, "Familism in Mormon Social Structure," (Ph.D. diss., University of Utah, 1954) ; Wilfrid C. Bailey, "The Social Organization of the Mormon Village," (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1955) ; and Ray R. Canning, "Changing Patterns and Problems of Family Life in Provo, Utah, 1905-1955," (Ph.D. diss., University of Utah, 1955). 12 Mark P. Leone, "The Evolution of Mormon Culture in Eastern Arizona," Utah Historical Quarterly 40 (1972) : 122—41; also of interest is Leone's imaginative "Archeology as the Science of Technology: Mormon Town Plans and Fences," in Charles Redman, ed., Research and Theory in Current Archeology (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1973) ; and "The Economic Basis for the Evolution of Mormon Religion," in Irving I. Zaretsky and Mark P. Leone, eds., Religious Movements in Contemporary America (New Haven: Princeton University Press, 1974), pp. 72266; John L. Sorenson, "Industrialization and Social Change: A Controlled Comparison of Two Utah Communities," (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1962).

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tinctively different in values as in physical a p p e a r a n c e from n o n - M o r m o n areas in the American West. Aside from well-known aspects of the physical landscape, centering in the nuclear farm village settlement pattern, Mormons have been observed by outside scholars to place greater stress on unity a n d solidarity within the community t h a n is the case in nonM o r m o n communities, avoiding competition, promoting cooperative enterprise, placing a higher value on group achievement t h a n on individual achievement and on developing virtue and doing good over other achievement goals. In addition, Mormons have a uniquely coterminous c h u r c h / community structure and an unusually strong patriarchal family structure. 13 Such a description raises several immediate questions, of course, for it seems to read more like a sociologist's "ideal t y p e " t h a n a description of reality. Does it hold true for M o r m o n communities in the distant as well as more recent past? Does it describe an u r b a n congregation or ward as well as a rural village ward? Are we observing expressions of a value system only, or does M o r m o n behavior accurately reflect the value system? These are important questions, worthy of the attention now being given t h e m by sociologists and other scholars. For the moment, however, let us suspend disbelief, and accept the description we have offered above as being at least broadly accurate for many M o r m o n groups during some periods in towns and villages spreading across a large area in the Intermountain West. If we were to do so we would be brought to conclude that Brigham Young and his associates h a d in some measure succeeded in their paramount taskâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the making of Saints. T h e critical question of M o r m o n history is not precisely that of Crevecoeur, " W h a t then is the American, this new m a n ? " But we might appropriately ask a more modest question, " W h a t is this new variety of American, this M o r m o n ? " or, more significantly for the historian, " W h e n c e this M o r m o n ? " During the last 150 years a readily distinguishable variety of American has arisen in our midst, under our very eyes, as it were, and has been perpetuated in some localities to the present. T h e matrix within which this process took place "See Vogt and Albert, People of Rimrock, esp. pp. 8 6 - 8 7 ; 9 8 - 1 0 0 ; 1 0 6 - 8 ; 153-54; 2 1 3 18- , ) 24- 240-41 ; 263. Vogt has described Mormon society as a "historically derived subcultural continuum " comparing Mormon and Texan communities in the Rimrock area in "American Subcultural Continua as Exemplified by the Mormons and Texans," American Anthropologist 57 (1955) â&#x20AC;˘ 1163-72 Important comparisons of social action in Mormon and Texan villages is in Evon Z.'Vogt a n d ' T h o m a s F. O'Dea, "A Comparative Study of the Role of Values in Social Action in Two Southwestern Communities," American Sociological Review ( 1 9 5 3 ) : 645-54 All of Leone's work, cited above, is relevant. Also important is M. P. Leone's "Measurement of Mormon Values," paper read at the American Anthropological Association meetings, November 1970. San Diego.

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was the Mormon community, a community peopled by immigrant and American-born. T h e varied body of converts from England and other parts of western Europe was not primarily agrarian but consisted of large numbers of skilled craftsmen, tradesmen, and factory workers. For many, their only common experience as Mormons to the time they arrived in the Salt Lake Valley was their conversion and their long journey to the Rocky Mountains. After a brief stay in Salt Lake City they generally settled in small farming villages. There, cast into close association with other Mormons, in formal church gatherings and in less formal daily associations, they began in earnest the process of becoming Saintsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;of developing the unique character later scholars described in R a m a h and in other Mormon villages. In detailed studies of life in Mormon villages of the past one has a rare opportunity to discern and analyze the processes that contributed to the building and perpetuation of a distinctive subculture. N E W C O M M U N I T Y STUDIES

Useful models for the study of Mormon communities have been supplied by historians of colonial America such as Philip Greven, John Demos, Kenneth Lockridge, and Michael Zuckerman. 14 Richard Bushman's work, although not centering on a specific community, is also important to the kind of study being proposed here, as is the work of Richard T. Vann on early English Quakers. 1 ' T h e distinguishing feature of the work of these scholars is that they have painstakingly interwoven the impressionistic and anecdotal genre of community history familiar to us with detailed analysis of changes over time in the economic and social conditions of community life. As historian Rhys Isaac put it, such studies give one the rare opportunity of directly approaching a central problem in American history, "the relationship between articulated ideology and the unsystematized awareness of social structure and process that we refer to as experience." 10 There are several reasons why similar work in the study of Mormon communities has barely begun. First, historians are reluctant to invest 14

John Demos, A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970) ; Philip J. Greven, Jr., Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1970); Kenneth A. Lockridge, A New England Tozvn: The First Hundred Years; Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636-1730 (New York: W. W. Norton and Co.. 1970); Michael Zuckerman, Peaceable Kingdoms: New England Towns in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970). "Richard L. Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee: Character and Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967). Richard T. Vann, The Social Development of English Quakerism, 1655-1755 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969). 16 Rhys Isaac, "Order and Growth. Authority and Meaning in Colonial New England," American Historical Review 76 (1971) : 728-37: especially p. 729.

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the extra time needed to familiarize themselves with the techniques of collecting and analyzing raw social data and then to do the work. Second, academic institutions closest to the Mormon church archives, accustomed to seeing the historian's only expense as the purchase of books and 3-by-5 notecards, have not allocated funds for programming, keypunching, and computing essential to such work. In addition, the quality and consistency of Mormon records is by no means uniform. Before 1907 vital records, for example, were kept or not kept in local ward minute books according to the diligence or caprice of whoever was serving as ward clerk. They have not been systematically deposited in a central archive from the beginning but have drifted in over the decades from the attics and trunks of church members. Moreover, the LDS Historical Department has not, until recent years, aggressively pursued the task of cataloging its holdings, preparing registers of important collections, and making them available to scholars. Important progress in all these areas is now taking place, and there is the prospect a few years hence of at least knowing what is available and how to find it. Even when this is done, however, the social historian will find serious gaps in the Mormon records due to the haphazard manner in which they were kept and preserved. T h e problem is aggravated by the fact that for much of the nineteenth century there was no separate civil record kept for many communities except for the federal census. Until towns became incorporated, virtually all local concerns were taken up in ward councils, with only a residuum being referred to county probate courts, for which there are few surviving records, or to higher ecclesiastical councils, which tended to be more systematic in record keeping. Neither minute books of town meetings nor registration of vital events can normally be found in continuous series for Mormon towns as they can for New England towns. Nevertheless, the ward records for some localities are complete and very detailed. Financial records of various kinds are available that offer a uniquely comprehensive outline of the economic activities of many localities. In addition, amateur genealogists have completed what Mormons call "family group sheets" for most Mormon families, making it possible to reconstitute the demographic structure of entire communities at a fraction of the time and expense normally involved in such projects. Finally, Mormon diarists have left a very rich and valuable pool of resources, soon to be made more useful and accessible through the Guide to Mormon Diaries and Autobiographies prepared by Davis Bitton. 17 In summary, it " T o be published in Provo, Utah, by Brigham Young University Press.

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is probably true, that despite deficiencies, the materials available for the study of Mormon communities are more complete and varied and certainly more centrally accessible than is the case for communities in most areas of the western United States. Hoping, then, to exploit the riches of the Mormon collection and to work around its paucities, scholars have begun a study of the town of Kanab, settled in 1870, on the then southernmost border of the Mormon domain. Data have been drawn from the manuscript federal censuses of 1870 and 1880, from a local census taken by the K a n a b United Order in 1874, which included assessments of land and property values for each head of household, and from "family group sheets"- -family reconstitution forms in the archives of the Genealogical Society of Utah. These data have been backed by a sizeable body of ward minute books and a good collection of diaries. Thus far, indicators of household size and structure, population structure, distribution of wealth, completed fertility at age of marriage, and other basic demographic characteristics of the K a n a b population of 1874 have been calculated. These preliminary data have been published elsewhere, and need not be detailed again here. 18 T h e study is useful, however, in pointing out two or three significant problems that have interested other historians of small rural villages of colonial New England and that the Mormon experience might help illuminate. Probably the most sophisticated and ambitious of recent studies of small farming communities is Philip J. Greven, Jr.'s Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts. Greven has found that the men who settled Andover in the 1640s rapidly established a closely integrated community characterized by strong family relationships, with fathers maintaining authority over mature sons through control of abundant farming lands. T h e citizens of Andover were remarkably healthy and the wives surprisingly fecund. Stability characterized the community until the eighteenth century when the population began to exert pressures upon the available supply of land. No longer dependent upon fathers who had little land to offer in any case, the sons began to marry at earlier ages and to move from the ancestral 18 Dean L. May, "People on the Mormon Frontier: Kanab's Families of 1874," Journal of Family History 1 (December 1976). The author is also collaborating with Mark Skolnick, Lee L. Bean, and others in a major demographic study, with the goal of building and analyzing a file of family reconstitution data to include nearly every Mormon family ever to have had a demographic event in Utah. In this interdisciplinary effort, the author will be focusing especially upon town and community studies and upon migration of Mormons within the Intermountain area. A description of the project together with early data on nuptiality and fertility is in M. Skolnick, L. Bean, D. May, V. Arbon, K. de Nevers, and P. Cartwright, "Mormon Demographic History I : Nuptiality and Fertility of Once-Married Couples," (Submitted to Population Studies, September 1976).

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home into unsettled areas. Patriarchal authority declined, mobility replaced stability, the population became less healthy and less fecund. Greven suggests further that the intense religious commitment of the Puritans, perhaps a product of dislocations suffered by the fathers of those who settled Andover, was refreshed by the experiences of the fourth generation. Younger sons, unsettled by the encroachment of population on land in the eighteenth century, tended to people localities that enthusiastically supported the religious revivals of the 1740s.19 Like the settlers of Andover, the first citizens of K a n a b were impelled by a conscious desire to establish a cohesive, stable community. Almost immediately, however, the Mormon patriarchs were deprived of the instrument that permitted the men of Andover to maintain authority over their sons. An extravagant estimate, extrapolated from census data on population and farm acreage, indicates that farms in Kane County could not have averaged more than 14.5 acres of tillable land per family. By 1880 there remained in the whole county only 1,160 acres of unimproved lands yet to be cultivated, not counting stock grazing acres, or about three additional acres per family if the land were distributed evenly among them. j n This suggests that the pressures Greven saw destroying family and community solidarity after 100 years of settled life in Andover were at work in K a n a b by the end of the first decade of settlement. In 1880 there were 109 young men in the village betwen the ages of fifteen and twentyfive, threateningâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;were they to establish farms of their ownâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to reduce already limited resources of land and water below a subsistence minimum. H a d all established independent farms in the area during the succeeding decade, they would have more than doubled the number of households in the community." 1 How did communities with severely limited resources accommodate such growth? It is reported that in Ephraim. many holders of twenty"Michael Walzer has related the rise of Puritanism to family disintegration in Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (Cambridge Mass, 1965). See also Christopher Hill Society and Puritanism in Pre-revolutionary England (New York: Schocken Books Inc 1964) The implications of this thesis for Mormon history are fascinating, lor it it should prove that maturing cohorts of youth were repeatedly being forced to leave home and build anew elsewhere we would find the same disorientation repeating itself and, as Greven proposes, leading to a renewed search in each generation for order and community, with an accompanying reinvigoration of the religious value system. 20 Calculated from U.S. Census data for 1880. Total persons in Kane County (3,085) was divided by persons per household in Kanab (5.2) to estimate the number of households in the county (593 26) This figure was multiplied by two-thirds (a conservative estimate of the number of landholders). Total acreage of agricultural land in the county, improved (6,923 acres) and unimproved (1,160), was then divided by the estimated number of landholding households (397). 21 Data gathered by the author from the U.S. manuscript census.

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acre parcels voluntarily relinquished five of their acres to provide land for new immigrants."' But such incidents were probably exceptional; and in any case, there were limits, both practical and moral, to this kind of selflessness. Did fathers distribute land evenly among their sons? Were first sons favored and younger sons forced to settle elsewhere? What effects did forced emigration of the young have upon family cohesiveness, kinship ties, or the perpetuation of religious values and sentiments? These questions cannot be answered today, but available data can yield answers through the type of detailed study now being clone. The K a n a b experience permits one to ask some interesting questions of Greven. The overcrowding which in Andover led in four generations to the decline of community and family cohesiveness was present in K a n a b almost from the beginning of settlement. Yet descriptions of Mormon villages in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are strongly reminiscent of those Greven used to describe Andover in her halcyon years. Did K a n a b achieve, in the absence of the paternal whip of land control which made Andover so tranquil, a similarly stable and cohesive society? If so, then could it be that Greven's stabilizing mechanism is altogether too simplistic and that there were more important forces working in Andover that have not yet been identified? John Demos, in his study of family life in Plymouth colony, likewise raises questions that one might profitably ask of the Mormon family in the nineteenth century. Small, cramped houses with limited living space made it necessary for family members to suppress hostilities and resentments which then were vented in their relationship with those outside the family. It was perhaps typical of life in Plymouth, Demos suggests, that "a man cursed his neighbor in order to keep smiling at his parent, spouse, or child." If this economics of hostile impulses is valid, then what might one look for in attempting to discern the relationship of Mormon family and village community? The impression from Mormon diaries is that community harmony and solidarity was a supreme value and that the socially imposed restraints upon open expression of anger against one's brother and sister Saints were as severely limiting as they were in the houses of Plymouth. When discord surfaced, the bishop or other priesthood officers arranged a face-to-face meeting of the disputing parties and the matter was usually settled by expression of mutual repentance and promise of future brotherly feelings. 2

"Lowry Nelson, " T h e U t a h F a r m Village of E p h r a i m , " Brigham 2 ( n . d . ) , p . 9. 23 Demos, A Little Commonwealth, p p . 49â&#x20AC;&#x201D;51.

Young

University

Studies

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James L. Bunting of K a n a b was furious at officers of the farmingcooperative whose horses had strayed into a commonly fenced field and destroyed part of his crop. W h e n he later refused to turn his improvements (presumably a portion of his harvests) into the cooperative institution, the secretary brought him before a bishop's court on charges of unchristianlike conduct. T h e bishop did not sustain the charges but concluded that Bunting nevertheless was in need of repentance and should turn in his improvements to the cooperative. Bunting did so and made public apology, recording the whole matter in his diary without a hint that his public apology did not represent his real feelings. 24 If community solidarity were consistently achieved through such means it would follow from Demos's logic that pent-up hostilities would find their release in some other m a n n e r â&#x20AC;&#x201D; p e r h a p s contentiousness in the home, the beating and mistreatment of animals (which the Saints were constantly enjoined against), or in a ritual hatred and distrust of Gentiles. O r could it be that Demos's proposal is too limiting in its implications and that in the monolithic M o r m o n town social constraints imposed by endless preaching and mutual watchfulness actually lowered the level of hostility rather than forcing it into more socially acceptable outlets? O n another question, Demos has argued eloquently that the family in colonial society carried numerous social burdens that since have been parceled out to other institutions in society. T h e family, he said, was a school, a business, a vocational institute, a church, a house of correction, a welfare institution, an orphanage, an old folks home, and a poorhouse.' J ' T h e local M o r m o n church or w a r d intervened directly in management of everal of these social concerns, assuming in some cases responsibility for what one would feel today are personal family matters, such as marriage and family structure. Was the M o r m o n family then, diminished by the church's assumption of power in such matters? O n e might suspect that in polygamous families, social and economic concerns would loom large as factors favoring stability, muting the growing emphasis in other American families on romantic love as the primary cement of stable family relationships. But if many social responsibilities already were partially assumed by the church, what social roles remained for the family in M o r m o n society, and what was the nature of the network relating individual to family, to community, to outside church authority? Research-

James Lovett Bunting Diary, April 19 and October 5. 1873, Archives Division, Historical Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City. 25 Demos, A Little Commonwealth, pp. 182-87.

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ers have only begun to ask such questions of the M o r m o n community and as yet can offer no answers with confidence. Michael Zuckerman, in his study of New England towns in the eighteenth century, raised questions especially relevant to the K a n a b experience. Brigham Young called settlers to K a n a b in 1870 under the express condition that their new community be characterized by "cooperation in all things." Cooperation in laying out the townsite, in building fences and canals, and in other activities did take p l a c e ; and in 1871 a cooperative farming association was organized. However, diarists recorded some dissatisfaction with those a r r a n g e m e n t s ; and when the communitarian United O r d e r was introduced in late spring 1874, the town began to break into two factions, divided primarily over whether a full c o m m u n a l organization or a loosely structured producers' cooperative was most desirable. Bitter controversy continued for four years and feelings remained high for decades thereafter. 26 Interesting in the K a n a b experience, however, is not the fact that there was controversy but how the settlers responded to it. Clearly the disharmony occasioned by the United O r d e r experience was seen by all sides as grievous calamity. T h e bishop suspended administration of the sacrament or communion for several months. Priesthood teachers did not visit their families. A new bishop was called from outside the community to assume leadership of the w a r d as well as of the United O r d e r . W h e n he was released no bishop was chosen for several months because, as one high church official put it, " t h e people were not united." 2 7 T h e community avoided a secession, as had h a p p e n e d when the Orderville founders broke away from M o u n t Carmel, only by assuming the burden of a prolonged inner agony. This response to such an experience would have been u n h e a r d of in n o n - M o r m o n western settlements where faction and the excesses of individualism were accepted daily fare. Z u c k e r m a n c a m e to the conclusion that "children who grew up in provincial Massachusetts grew up in a society which insisted on concord and consensus; as they grew they became, subtly, almost irresistably, people w h o could live in such a society." 1 It may safely be said that the m a n y children of K a n a b also grew up in a society that insisted on con^'See P. T. Reilly, " K a n a b United O r d e r : T h e President's Nephew and the Bishop," Utah Historical Quarterly 42 (1974) : 144-64; also Leonard J. Arrington, Feramorz Y. Fox, and Dean L. May, " M a n y Men, Many Minds." Chapter 11 of Building the City of God: Community and Cooperation among the Mormons (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976). 27 Kanab Ward Historical Record, Book A, August 7, 1877, L D S Archives. The speaker was Apostle Erastus Snow. 2S Zuckerman, Peaceable Kingdoms, p. 72.

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cord and consensus. In 1874 the terms apparently described more accurately what the citizens felt ought to be rather than what was. Yet, if the descriptions of Mormon society in other provincial towns are valid for Kanab, one would be forced to conclude that the children did eventually realize in some measure the harmonious society their fathers wished for. If so, it would be enlightening to know more about the processes which brought so happy a conclusion. Zuckerman asks by what authority harmony was maintained in New England towns. He concludes that the town meeting provided a forum where problems were discussed and disputed until consensus, not a majority decision, prevailed.21' If a man later went against town meeting decisions to which he had publicly assented, he faced strong community disapproval. In Kanab, meeting after meeting was held to discuss the United Order. Virtually all men of the community were asked to express their feelings each time, in a ritual that surely was cathartic and lowered the level of tension in the town but more importantly committed the heads of household in public to support the aims of the United Order leaders. The process was almost exactly the same as that described by Zuckerman in the New England town meeting. Public opinion offered an important means of insuring compliance to town resolutions in New England villages. In Newburyport an agreement not to buy foreign tea was enforced "by the threat of publishing the names of unrepentant offenders as 'pests of society and of ye Country.' "30 Such sanctions were important in Mormon towns as well. In Brigham City, Utah, for example, priesthood officers were reportedly placed at the doors of private business establishments in competition with the town-owned cooperative store. No sanction w^as used other than to take clown the names of Saints who patronized the private store, but this was sufficient to close it down.' 1 Similarly, in Salt Lake City the stake high council compelled reluctant members of a canal association to pay their assessment by threatening that unless payment were made soon defendants would "be cut off from the Church and their names published." 52 -"Ibid., pp. 154-86. :, "Quoted in ibid., p. 240. :!1 Arrington, Fox, a n d May, City of God, p p . 4 4 7 - 4 8 ; the minutes of the General Council of the U n i t e d O r d e r of Box Elder County, July 20, 1880, L D S Archives, contain a unanimously carried resolution to "disapprove, discountenance, and disfellowship all persons who would start an opposition store or who would assist in erecting a building for that purpose." 82 Minutes of the Salt Lake Stake H i g h Council, September 7, 1871, m s , L D S Archives, Salt Lake City.

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According to Zuckerman, when accommodation could not be reached between factions in the New England town and outside arbitration failed there was no alternative but separation, as the cases of Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams, and Thomas Hooker illustrate. In the Utah village of Mount Carmel a dispute over the United Order was resolved in precisely this manner and peace and harmony restored to the new community and the old. This same sequence of events led to the founding of Bunkerville, Nevada, as a communal United Order village.53 Some leaders of Kanab wished to separate as well, but higher church authorities would not permit it, a decision that kept the village in anguish long after peace had been restored in Mount Carmel. Ultimately several prominent participants in the controversy did separate, joining the new community of Orderville. By now it should be obvious that studies of New England colonial villages offer the student of the Mormon community more than just fresh methods and provocative questions. There emerges from the writings of these scholars and others a general description of town life that sounds hauntingly familiar to the student of the Mormon community. Kenneth Lockridge, in his study of seventeenth-century Dedham, Massachusetts, has concluded that "the founders of this community set out to construct a unified social organism in which the whole would be more than the sum of the parts. To a considerable degree, they succeeded." 34 Michael Zuckerman called his New England towns of the eighteenth century, "Peaceable Kingdoms," maintaining that "consciousness of community, in Massachusetts, continued at least three quarters of the way through the eighteenth century as a prime value of public life, and abiding core of provincial culture." The study, he concluded, had nourished his "notion that other-oriented communalism is central to a comprehension of the American experience." 35 Richard Bushman observed that "In the last quarter of the seventeenth century the Puritan rulers of Connecticut valued order above all other social virtues Community order occupied 30 most of the rulers' field of vision." These scholars do not agree upon when the integrated, well-ordered society of colonial New England began to disintegrate nor upon what forces led to its dissolution. Some place the limits of the harmonious communal order at the edges of the nuclear 33

See Chapter 13 of Arrington, Fox, and May, City of God.

"Lockridge, New England 35

Zuckerman, Peaceable

^Bushman, Puritan

Town,

Kingdoms,

to Yankee,

p. 1. p . vii.

pp. 3-38.

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family, others at the edge of town. But all have concentrated upon understanding the connection between " o r d e r and growth, authority and m e a n i n g " in the colonial New England town. And all agree that for some periods of time a n d at some level an extraordinarily harmonious society was realized. O n e cannot help but be reminded of the letter Asael Smith, Joseph Smith's N e w E n g l a n d - b o r n grandfather, left to his family as a final summ a r y of the wisdom of his years. In one p a r a g r a p h he asked his descendants to "Bless God that you live in a land of liberty" and to "hold union a n d order precious jewels."" 7 H e apparently did not perceive in 1799 that the first value, "liberty," might come to be in opposition to the second two, "unity and order." It is perhaps significant that Joseph Smith's visions were above all organizing and unifying in their influence upon himself a n d upon a family divided in religious faith. "If you are not one you are not m i n e , " the voice of Smith's God t h u n d e r e d to his followers on one occasion. " M y house is a house of order," it affirmed on another. 3 8 T h e two terms of the phrase " U n i t e d O r d e r , " the M o r m o n n a m e for a perfect c o m m u n a l society, seem in this context more t h a n historical accident. Unity and O r d e r were the key values Smith's successor Brigham Young sought to effect within the farming communities whose founding he directed. T h u s , one suggests t h a t studies of M o r m o n towns should be directed t o w a r d those elemental questions addressed implicitly or explicitly in the work of historians of early America. It would be i m p o r t a n t to test in the M o r m o n setting Greven's hypothesis t h a t scarcity of n a t u r a l resources, such as land or water, can be destructive of family authority patterns, leading to instability a n d disharmony in local communities. O n e needs to understand better the relationship suggested by Demos between family h a r m o n y a n d community harmony, asking, of a b u n d a n t evidence in M o r m o n towns, if conscious efforts to suppress hostility in one sphere do, in fact, lead to increased expressions of hostility in other spheres. M u c h would be learned by examining, as Z u c k e r m a n did in N e w England towns, the instruments of social control in M o r m o n communities. W e r e the citizens of M o r m o n towns ever successful in achieving the harmonious society their leaders d r e a m e d of and, if so, how? O n e intriguing, and p e r h a p s critical, difference exists between w h a t has been learned t h r o u g h the study of N e w E n g l a n d towns a n d w h a t - P r i n t e d in Joseph F. Smith, Jr.. Asahel Smith of Topsfield. Mass.: Topsfield Historical Society, 1902), p. 95. 38 Doctrine and Covenants, rev. ed. 1923, 3 8 : 2 7 : 132: 8.

Massachusetts

(Topsfield,

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might be learned through the study of Mormon towns. Greven, Demos, Zuckerman, and Bushman all seem to be describing communities that began in Eden. These scholars sought to identify and understand the forces of ^integration. Mormon towns inevitably began outside the Garden. It may be that in studying Mormon towns one will be discovering and observing forces that led to reintegration. One is dealing, then, with a central theme of the American experience: the tension between the wish to preserve order and the libertarian ideologies loosed during the Revolution. And one has in the Mormon community what promises to be an endlessly rewarding historical specimen; for it is a society that, true to the advice of Asael Smith and the visions of his grandson, consciously and in some measure successfully, reversed the historic trend of American attitudes toward order and authority. The history of Joseph Smith's spiritual descendants could not be captured in the phrase Puritan to Yankee; Puritan to Puritan might be more appropriate, or perhaps even Yankee to Puritan.

Cyrus E. Dallin: Let Justice Be Done By R E L L G. FRANCIS. Springville Museum of Art, 1976. Xv + 262 pp. $13.95.) This publication of some 262 pages and a great many illustrations serves a very useful purpose in thoroughly researching the life and career of Cyrus E. Dallin, an American sculptor of merit who was born in Springville, U t a h . Despite the quality which is often found in Dallin's work and the importance of a number of large scale monuments by him throughout the country, not very much recognition has come his way. Rell G. Francis's book now establishes a clear record and this is its value. As record, the book is a readable account of the highly interesting career of an artist whose beginnings were not promising but whose career was very rich in its succession of triumphs, failures, and personal tensions. Mr. Francis does what he sets out to do, which is to "introduce, interpret and identify rather than evaluate." T h e author does not attempt to place Dallin's work in any art historical context, but he does supply the factual basis upon which "art critics may build." It is to be expected, given the present raging interest in American art whose thematic material is the Indian, that Dallin's work will come into increasingly searching appraisal. It is clear enough

(Springville, U t . :

that he was a highly variable artist quite capable of banal and pedestrian output, but when his motivation and talent coincided he could give us images of enduring worth. Particularly interesting to many will be the accounts of relations between Dallin and the townspeople of Springville. Dallin had a real attachment to the town of his birth and spoke of it often with convincing emotion, but his lifetime experience in the "great world" beyond Springville and the fact that neither he nor his wife was Mormon did contribute to misunderstandings. Mr. Francis's book is well organized and provides good documentation and many photographs. T h e quality of these varies substantially, in many cases due to the state of the originals; but many of Mr. Francis's own photographs are not well reproduced. T h e book has a good index, a catalog of the known works of the artist, but no list of illustrations. Not all sources for photographs are given. E. F.

SANGUINETTI

Utah Museum of Fine Arts University of Utah

A Trace of Desert Waters: The Great Basin Story. By SAMUEL G. H O U G H T O N . (Glendale, Calif.: T h e Arthur H . C l a r k Company, 1976. 287 pp. $17.75.) A Trace of Desert Waters sets for itself the laudable task of describing the Great Basin over the last 75,000 years. In so doing it describes five geographical areas recognized by the author (North-

west Lakes 5 Lake Lahontan System, Central Basins, Death Valley System, and Lake Bonneville System) from the period of maximum extent of water during the Wisconsin era of the Ice Age

94 to the present settlement and use. T h e format for each of the author's geographical areas includes a detailed analysis of the drainage basin and its associated water features from the Wisconsin to the present, a less detailed discussion of biota and wildlife, a general view of prehistoric archaeological findings and conjectures, an uneven account of the history from the first occupance by "white men," and a token statement about present activity. In the foreword the author offers a disclaimer concerning the "inadequacies in this work," justifying them as an attempt to "avoid the raptures of the intellectual deep." Unfortunately, in avoiding the intellectual deep his book founders on the shoals of superficiality. As an example, the best portions of the book are those dealing with the Pleistocene lake of the Great Basin, but even here the coverage is uneven. T h e Bonneville Basin, largest of the ancient lakes and site of the largest relic features and greatest modern populations, is covered in two brief chapters. By comparison, coverage of the Lahontan System of Nevada spans six chapters which detail supposedly important aspects in the development of the region. Importance is misleading as the author unaccountably includes a short history of the development of the automobile from the French road wagon of 1769 to the first auto in Nevada in 1903. T h e inclusion of this data is typical of the book as the author seems to have no distinct criteria for determining what to include. T h e sections of the book dealing with the geography and environment of the Great Basin are the best, but even here there are occasional, blatant errors such as his statement that U t a h Lake has become brackish. T h e serious reader would wish that the maps had a scale and that all of the rivers and streams discussed were included, but this is a minor criticism compared to the author's conclusion that only the Bear, the Weber, and Jordan rivers "feed"

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Great Salt Lake and only the Provo River "feeds" U t a h Lake. For a book devoted to water and settlement in the Great Basin to ignore the role in settlement of the smaller rivers and streams "feeding" these water bodies is inexcusable, even for one not plumbing "the intellectual deep." As history the book provides good detail on Nevada, and the sections devoted to the railroad in that state will interest many. T h e student of U t a h history will be less than ecstatic over the author's handling of the Mormon occupation of the Great Basin, including his discussion of Judge Cradlebaugh's " ( t h e same who later became a congressman from N e v a d a ) " attempt to bring the culprits of the Mountain Meadow Massacre to justice. T h e book is an expansion of six articles written for Nevada Highways and Parks, and the author has not analyzed critically the Great Basin outside of Nevada. T h e author's penchant for generalization (his statement that the Indian population diminished considerably but today is more numerous is a classic) is perhaps the greatest criticism of the book. Tables or comparative statistics which would be invaluable are noteworthy for their absence. For example, the author's comment that the H u m boldt is the most important river in the Great Basin is buttressed by only a single figure relating the maximum flow recorded in the river. As a consequence, the book can only be labeled superficial. In summary, A Trace of Desert Waters is a useful introduction to the relic water features of the Great Basin, but its ambitious goal of covering the use of the Great Basin over the last 75,000 years is hardly realized. It does provide a good, if fragmented and uneven, general overview of the Great Basin's waters: the reader should expect no more. RICHARD H. J A C K S O N

Brigham

Young

University

Book Reiiews

and

Notices

Emigrant Trails of Southeastern Idaho. [By HOWARD R O S S CRAMER.] (Washington. D.C.: U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management, 1976. 157 pp. F ree.) This book deals with four emigrant trails in southeastern Idaho: the Oregon Trail; Hudspeth Cutoff; California Trail; and the Salt Lake Cutoff. The trails were developed and used primarily from 1834 to 1860. The book makes available to the general public, as well as the serious historian, an important, illustrated portion of southeastern Idaho history. The book is full of pictures, drawings, and excerpts of pages from diaries, as well as maps of each trail. Each section of the book follows the same pattern: first, a short historical introduction of each trail, followed by a m a p showing the entire trail, then map segments indicating points mentioned in the diaries. The maps are especially wrell done. They are colorful and useful in pinpointing specific areas spoken of in the diaries. The author, while working as a historian for the Bureau of Land Management, did extensive research using

diary accounts, old surveys, aerial photographs, artifacts of the trails, and oral tradition to locate and map the trails. He field-checked each trail and located points of interest indicated in the diaries. The author's careful extraction of pertinent detail from Idaho. Oregon, and California trail diaries brings to life the vicissitudes of those early pioneers and the fortitude and courage they possessed as they traversed a bleak section of southeastern Idaho on the way to their promised lands. A bibliography containing primary and secondary sources is included in the book. Especially useful to the researcher is the inclusion of the collections wherein the diaries are found. The book is well done and is a credit to the author and publisher. DAVID L.

CROWDER

Ricks College Rexburg, Idaho

Heart Mountain: The History of an Amer ican Concentration Camp. By DOUGLAS W. N E L S O N . (Madison: Department of History, TJniversity of Wisconsin, 1976. L\+ 183 pp. $12.50.) Often, little-known facts of history achieve respectability through the perseverance of a dedicated individual. T h e book under review certainly sheds light on some very interesting and valuable data on the lives of approximately ten thousand people of Japanese ancestry during World War I I which have received scant or cursory attention from historians. "Personal traits, individual achievements, and backgrounds had been melted into the single, war-inspired racial stereotype epitomized by General DeWitt's aphorism 'Once a Jap, always a Jap.' Citizens and aliens, without differentiation, had been herded up

into stables and stock pavilions at Santa Anita, Pomona, Portland, and the other assembly centers. There they had endured each other's stench in primitive public latrines, eaten inadequate, illprepared food, and slept where horses had slept before them. And this was only the beginning." For many, the next three years or more were nothing short of a nightmare. Heart Mountain, Wyoming, became one of ten concentration camps built to detain over one hundred ten thousand people of Japanese ancestry â&#x20AC;&#x201D; men, women, and children, citizens and aliens alike â&#x20AC;&#x201D; transferred from the temporary assembly centers without even lip ser-

96 vice to the rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. The status of nonwhite minorities has always been a precarious one in the United States. In particular, for the people of Japanese ancestry, the action of the American people and government only reinforced the insecurity and trepidation already visited upon them since their arrival in the United States many decades earlier, and compounded innumerable inequities and injustices with compelling force and intensity during a critical time in the history of our nation and of the people of Japanese ancestry. How do we judge loyalty to a country? By the standards imposed by the government officials who have stripped the very citizens of most of their constitutional rights or by resisting further encroachments upon the basic rights guaranteed by the Constitution and aggressively advocating concessions from the government to recognize the rights of those who have been incarcerated in concentration camps, USA? T o be a prisoner and yet to oppose the policies and dictates of the oppressor takes courage and sacrifice that can be equated with the heroism of those who have fought in the field of battle in war. Such were the likes of Kiyoshi Okamoto, Frank Inouye, Paul T. Nakadate, Frank Emi, Guntaro Kubota, Minolo Tamesa, Isamu Horino, Ben Wakaye, and many others. Not surprisingly, the name of A. L. Wirin, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Los Angeles, who represented many unpopular and controversial constitutional causes, appears as one of the stalwarts who was in the forefront of those who witnessed evil while it was being perpetrated and did something about it. Mr. Wirin was the attorney who represented many of the above when they were indicted by the United States government.

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The passage of time enables different perspectives to be drawn as records and documents become available. From the beginning, apparently, the actions of government officials, federal, state, and local, were shortsighted and irreversibly wrong. The top echelon of the federal government, the War Relocation Authority, and officials at the state level created propaganda, made ill-conceived plans, and displayed bad judgment. Their motives â&#x20AC;&#x201D; mainly politically, economically, and emotionally inspired â&#x20AC;&#x201D; reveal unfounded fears, prejudice, and greed to have been the order of the day. The results of this were broken homes and families: divided loyalties among relatives, neighbors, friends, and country: destruction of the will to survive for many; and a massive onslaught against the constitutional rights and privileges of thousands and thousands of loyal individuals, citizens and aliens alike. The chapters on Resistance, Conflict and Faction; Registration and Segregation; and T h e Movement against The Draft certainly reveal the bitterness and divisiveness engendered by the policies of the government, as well as the failure of the government to recognize underlying attitudes and feelings of the oppressed internees who were engineered into a contrived situation and left with few weapons with which to fight except their individual convictions. Finally, it was interesting to note how the newspapers of Wyoming were responsible for fanning the fires of hate with every rumor relating to any suspect activity originating from dubious and unreliable sources. The author has made a valuable and serious contribution to an episode in the history of our country which has been shrouded with mystery and lack of credible information. Lest we forget, this book should be read by all people interested in protecting and preserving the basic rights

Book Reviews and Notices of all people, citizens and aliens alike. who live in this country. As one who lived in Heart Mountain, I found the book brought home some very tragic memories. One relates to my father, who was mentioned in the book as follows: "The front-page feature story is about the death of one of the community's leading personalities â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Clarence Uno, a veteran of World War I." And, ironically, later on: "A few months later, a number of Park County Legion officers volunteered to participate in the elaborate military funeral

97 at Heart Mountain of Clarence Uno. a veteran of World War I and himself a legionnaire." It is ironic because the legionnaires were one of the most vocal groups both in California and in Wyoming to agitate for the permanent removal of the impounded people from both states. When my father died, I was a very impressionable, thirteen-yearold prisoner. RAYMOND S. U N O

Salt Lake City

1863Bosque Redondo Reservation Experiment, T n: The L niversitv of Arizona Press, 1976. 1868. By GERALD T H O M P S O N . (TUCSO Xii + 196 pp. Cloth, $8.50: paper. $4.95. )

The Army and the Navajo:

The

The "Bosque Redondo," these are words that elicit diverse reactions from persons familiar with their significance. Was it a contractor's scheme, an American concentration camp, or was it an honest attempt on the part of the federal government to solve the New Mexico Indian problem once and for all? There are many ways of looking at the Bosque Redondo Indian reservation which in itself will remain a controversial experiment in Indian history regardless of the perspective from which it is viewed. Gerald Thompson, in this attempt to place the history of the reserve into what he sees as a more balanced perspective, views the establishment of the Bosque as an effort on the part of the army, and particularly on the part of Brig. Gen. James H. Carleton, to "civilize" the Navajo Indians and prepare them for assimilation into the mainstream of American life. He also sees the reservation as being set aside to prevent the Navajo from being exterminated by the New Mexico militia. It is the author's thesis that the experiment was a "successful failure." It failed in its primary objectives of ending Navajo depredations in New Mexico

and in the attempt to make the members of that tribe self-sufficient, but it was a success in that they were more capable of coping with the manners and customs of the white man upon their return to their homeland. They had had a taste of, among other things, white man's education, religion, health care, trading practices, and the methods of irrigated farming that they were eventually able to use to their advantage. They had also gained a sense of tribal unity during the period of their incarceration. Thompson feels, too, that the Bosque experience was successful in that it taught American leaders, in particular the army and the Indian Bureau, some of the pitfalls that should be avoided in the establishment and administration of future Indian reservations. After briefly sketching the background history of the Navajo wars and other significant events leading to the establishment of Fort Sumner, the author concentrates his study upon the army's administration of General Carleton's grand experiment. The self-assured Carleton convinced his superiors that the reservation system was the correct solution to the Indian problems in New Mexico, and once it was established, he

98 did all in his power to see to it that his plan for uplifting the Indian succeeded. This man, a "typical mid-nineteenthcentury humanitarian" ( ? ) , staked both his career and reputation upon the success or failure of the Bosque Redondo reservation. Other writers have provided the details of the military campaigns against the Navajo, the Long Walk, and New Mexico politics during the period under study. Thompson, while briefly touching upon each of these areas of concern, concentrates most of his effort on the examination of the difficulties encountered by the army in obtaining and maintaining an adequate food supply for their prisoners. Food was the key to the success of the Bosque, for while there was a sufficient supply, relative calm prevailed. Contractors, their political and financial affiliations, and the role they played at the Bosque are examined throughout the book. T o suggest, as other authors have, that this reservation was perpetuated by the men who were in a position to take advantage of the high prices they received for their goods would be contrary to the evidence presented in this study. Thompson points out that prices were, for the most part, determined on the basis of supply and demand. The remainder of this study covers a wide range of subjects. Among those discussed in depth are the jurisdictional disputes between the Indian Bureau and the army, the daily routine on the reservation, the wide variety of problems encountered by the army in administering the sprawling reserve, and the major personalities involved in this undertaking. The Bosque Redondo Indian reservation was a short-lived institution. It had been the plausible dream of an egotistical army general who with its failure faded from the limelight. Chief among

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the several reasons for its failure were the excessive costs involved (over $100,000 a month) in maintaining the reserve and the fact that although over 8,000 Navajos were being held prisoner it did not bring an end to Navajo depredations in New Mexico. Yearly infestations of cut worms, overcrowding. the lack of a fuel supply, droughts, floods, and political pressure on both the local and national levels were also causes for the failure of this experiment. Faced with a complicated role of protector and provider the army is pictured as having done a creditable job in its administration of this reservation. The author, while not totally ignoring them, does tend to gloss over the hardships and suffering of the Indian prisoners. His primary sources of information, the official post returns and correspondence of the army, like many government reports today, make things look better than they actually were. This work could have been made more readable with a more thorough job of editing. The author has presented it in a style almost pedantic at times, and it contains an unnecessary amount of repetition and redundancies, especially in the transitions between chapters. Another minor, yet still annoying point, is that the full title is only found on the dust jacket (I have not seen the paperback edition), and without benefit of the full title one could easily assume this to be just another in the expanding list of studies concentrating upon the military campaigns in Navajo country. This volume is a worthwhile addition to the literature on the subject, but in the opinion of this reviewer, it should be read along with Lawrence Kelley's Navajo Roundup, Frank McNitt's Navajo Wars, and Lynn Bailey's Long Walk, among others, to get the balanced perspective sought by the author. J O H N D. SYLVESTER

Phoenix,

Arizona

Book Reviews

and

Notices

Cities on Stone: Nineteenth Century Lithograph Images of the Urban West. By J O H N W. R E P S . (Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum, 1976. 99 pp. Cloth, $14.95; paper, $9.95.) Cities on Stone is intended to accompany a large exhibition of lithographed views of western American cities and tow7ns scheduled for the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in September and October of this year. The book stands very well on its own, however. In a "Note on Cartographic Research Methods" in his 1965 survey of . . . City Planning in the United States, John W. Reps described an exhaustive search of U.S. Geologic Survey maps, state and countv atlases, libraries with significant map collections, early travel accounts, early illustrated historical works, collections of local, state and regional historical societies, and so on. That book, like other products of Reps's research, including Cities on Stone, demonstrates the fruits of his considerable familiarity with the subject. The text in this latest work, though concise, covers a surprising lot of ground. Arrayed within a description of the local historical context, he has summarized the technique of lithography and its development in the early nineteenth century, the visual characteristics and changes in this type of print during the years of its popularity as well as material on the artists, artisans, and publishers. Typical of Reps's writing is that he tends to "stick with the facts." There are no flights of poetic fancy or attempts to locate the material in a broad conceptual or theoretical framework. His style is solid and dependably descriptive. While it is clear and easily read, it docs not directly inspire or challenge the reader to consider the larger historical context or the implications of this nineteenth - century phenomenon. It does, however, provide the basis for both. City views from which these lithographs were directly derived began to

appear in relatively large numbers shortly following the early Renaissance in Europe. They were intimately related to the development of printmaking in Europe which was itself integral to the economic and political expansion taking place at the time. The demand for a greatly expanded flow of information and the widespread hunger for knowledge about the rest of the world gave impetus to the popularization of this mode of portrayal for cities and towns. The development of lithography was an important step in the direction of efficiency, speed, and flexibility in the production and dissemination of information. In the context of industrial expansion and the tremendous opening of whole new sections of geography in the United States, city views provided an important means of conceptualizing and relating to a changing environment. In this light it is interesting to consider Reps's observation of the widespread change of visual perspective in these works, which occurred in the 1860s. From the common acceptance of a slightly elevated point of view, such as that which might have been achieved from a bluff overlooking the town, the highly elevated bird's-eye view became more typical. By this means the need to depict larger towns could be accommodated. Also, subjects which were previously depicted primarily as interesting scenes or illustrations for the market back east now became a type of map complete with a legend which would tend to have its major market in or around the city itself. The views represented in this book fall within a range of material which includes town plats, maps, architectural renderings, town plans, and landscapes.

100 Some of these views embody a good bit of imagination and others are fully documentary. Their actual use varied from inflated promotional schemes to straightforward representations which were purchased as such. The book adequately provides the means for further investigation of the subject with thorough footnotes, a good bibliography, and a complete listing of vital information on all the works in the exhibition, nearly half of which are illustrated in full color. The layout of the book is pleasantly clear and attractive, and the print is relatively large and easily readable with one exception: footnotes are

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printed in a light gray ink which contributes considerably to the attractiveness of the page but requires a good, strong light to be easily read. As a survey of a body of fascinating material the book is very sound and as Reps states in the conclusion of his text, "Decoration, printing technology, history, business, and geography are . . . uniquely combined in this endlessly fascinating form of American popular art."

RICHARD E.

KIBBEY

Utah State Division of Fine Arts

Seven American Utopias: The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism, 1790-1975. By DOLORES HAYDEN. (Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press, 1976. Ix + 401 pp. $16.95.) Wherefore, may the kingdom of God go forth, that the kingdom of heaven may come, that thou, O God, mayest be glorified in heaven so on earth, that thine enemies may be subdued; for thine is the honor, power and glory, forever and ever. Amen. (Doctrine and Covenants 65:6) Seven American Utopias, which explores American communitarian groups â&#x20AC;&#x201D;the Shakers of Hancock, Massachusetts ; the Mormons of Nauvoo, Illinois; the Fourierists of Phalanx, New Jersey; the Perfectionists of Oneida, New York ; the Inspirationalists of Amana, Iowa; the Union Colonists of Greeley, Colorado: and the Cooperative Colonists of Llano del Rio, Californiaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;is much broader in its analysis than the title suggests. In addition to architectural relationships, Dolores Hayden, assistant professor of architecture at M I T , examines town planning and the built environment as expressions of religious, social, and economic organization in several of America's most significant communitarian societies.

While all of the communal groups are perceptively discussed, the chapter "Eden Versus Jerusalem," which analyzes the Mormon city of Nauvoo, Illinois, and, to a lesser extent, Kirtland. Ohio, and the Great Basin settlements, is of particular value to the student of Utah history. Hayden makes Mormon communal experiences more meaningful by placing them within the context of a broader movement which saw the establishment of hundreds of communitarian towns before the end of the nineteenth century. It is suggested, for example, that the "Plat of the City of Zion," prepared by Joseph Smith and implemented in part by Sidney Rigdon. may have been strongly influenced by the plan of Harmony, Pennsylvania, with which Rigdon was undoubtedly familiar. Among the most educational contributions, however, are the author's findings related to how the Mormons eventually resolved many of the conflicts between authoritarian and participatory processes, between communal

Book Reviews and

101

Notices

and private territory, and between unique and replicable town plans. Working on the premise that the Nauvoo Mormons attempted to develop, although perhaps unconsciously, a dual idealism characterized by Eden, "a model of earthly paradise . . . a garden city of single-family dwellings," and Jerusalem, "a model of heaven . . . a cult center dominated by their twin monuments" (the temple and the Nauvoo Llouse), Hayden shows how this dualism, which was never fully articulated, was transcended as Mormons established hundreds of communitarian colonies in the kingdom of Deseret. T h e building of architectural monuments with the intention of giving Nauvoo the image of a sacred city, the "Great Emporium of the West, the center of all centers . . . ," as well as orienting and unifying the constant influx of new immigrants, was undermined by speculation and indebtedness at a time when all available capital was tied up in constructing public buildings. While the tradition of Mormons as great builders was carried west, the U t a h Mormons wisely learned from their economic failures in Nauvoo not to overextend themselves on expensive monumental architecture. And, as Hayden points out, the survival economy which gave priority to irrigation ditches, forts, and mills, also made for less imaginative but more successful communities in U t a h . Seven American Utopias is well researched and presents insightful interpretation of Mormon failures and successes in historic environmental design. Of particular interest are the more than two hundred sixty historical and contemporary photos, drawings, maps, charts, and diagrams which graphically dramatize the textual material. T o the architectural historian, if anything is lacking it is a more in-depth

study of the actual design origins of the specific communitarian buildings. It is claimed that the Kirtland Temple design was inspired by Asher Benjamin's Country Builder's Assistant and that the Nauvoo Temple was a product of collective creativity, but more comparative information on the architectural and planning training of Mormon artisans would have deepened the reader's appreciation for the "Mormon orders" and other examples of Mormonesque synthetic eclecticism. In addition, the personal philosophical differences between Joseph Smith and Brigham Young as planners could have been explored in greater depth. T h e implications of Seven American Utopias for modern planning are intriguing. T h e author attempts to analyze successful communitarian planning principles that are applicable today. Suggestions for historic preservation are also given. Hayden comments that "Perhaps the Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo have m a d e the greatest mistake as preservationists: they leveled the communal schoolhouse which the Icarian community built in that town in order to give preeminence to the Mormon remains." In U t a h the problem is a different one. Significant historical and architectural resources are being destroyed in favor of new structures which, being devoid of architectural character, show that the principles of economic reorganization learned in Nauvoo are still being applied today in the extreme. O n e is left to wonder, after reading Hayden's penetrating account, if Mormons today have forgotten the potential of architecture and environmental design as instruments of salvation.

A L L E N D.

Utah State Historical

ROBERTS

Society

History

of Mapleton.

H A R M E R and

By R A L P H K A Y W E N D E L L B. J O H N S O N .

(Provo: Press Publishing Ltd., 1976. V + 198 pp. $10.95.) This history of Mapleton, a small rural community on benchland southeast of Springville, was adapted from a master's thesis by Ralph Kay Harmer. T h e book's format is attractive, and the many George Edward Anderson photographs (courtesy of Rell G. Francis) add immeasurably to the visual documentation of the area. Several attempts were made to farm and live on the Union Bench above Springville, but permanent settlement did not occur until the 1870s. Long under the political control of Springville, the town was officially organized as Mapleton in 1901. Although the town developed in a pattern similar to most small Mormon villages, the farmlands of Mapleton did attract several Italian Catholic families who successfully established a place for themselves in this Mormon community. History of Mapleton is a generally excellent example of local history, proceeding as it does from many primary sources and personal interviews. T h e latter half of the book contains the usual family biographies and photographs. Colorado:

A Bicentennial History. By M A R S H A L L SPRAGUE. T h e States and the Nation Series. (New York and Nashville, T e n n . : W. W. Norton and Company and the American Association for State and Local History, 1976. Lx + 2 0 4 p p . $8.95.)

Common themes run through much U t a h and Colorado history: many of

the explorers who first penetrated and described Colorado performed similar feats in U t a h ; the displacement of the Utes in Colorado profoundly affected Indian affairs in U t a h ; union activity among miners in western Colorado influenced labor in Carbon County and Bingham; use of Colorado River water and the development of oil shale resources continue to link the two states. Marshall Sprague's volume in the AASLH Bicentennial series gives Utahns an opportunity to reflect on their own history and see it in a less parochial context. Fetishes and Carvings of the Southwest. By O S C A R T. BRANSON. (Santa Fe, N. M . : Treasure Chest Publications, Inc., 1976. 64 pp. Paper, $7.95.) A pictorial account that includes prehistoric to contemporary examples. The Filming of the West. By J O N T U S KA. (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday and Company, 1976. Xxii + 618 pp. $14.95.) A veritable encyclopedia of the directors, stars, and movies that created the powerful visual images that continue to shape a worldwide audience's perception of the American West. Fodor's

Old West. Edited by E U G E N E

FODOR, ROBERT C. F I S H E R , and L E S LIE B R O W N . (New York: David Mc-

Kay Company, Inc., 1976. Viii + 504 pp. $12.95.) This guide to twenty-two states west of the Mississippi contains much prac-

103

Book Reviews and Notices tical information for travelers. However, the U t a h section is marred by several errors: the M o r m o n immigrants did not come to U t a h via Logan Canyon nor is the Kearns Mansion, home of the U t a h State Historical Society, located in Park City. For no readily apparent reason, the only restaurants listed are one in Park City and one in Richfield. This is hardly representative of U t a h ' s many excellent eating places, especially in Salt Lake City. Ghost Towns of the West. By O L I V E W. BURT. (New York: Julian Messner, 1976. 96 p p . $6.64.) T h e ghost towns featured in this new children's book were carefully selected to represent major themes in western history: gold a n d silver mining, the westward movement, cattle drives, coal mining, and the d r e a m of a new life in the West. T h e stories of five different ghost towns are told in detail, including Winter Quarters, Carbon County. Twenty other ghost towns—five in U t a h —arc singled out for summary treatment. Once again, Olive Burt demonstrates her ability to convey the details of history in a clear, engaging way for young readers. T h e men and women of m a n y nationalities and races w h o founded and developed these towns come to life in her graphic presentations. Great

Mountains

of North

The Hispanic of Colorado.

Contribution

to the State

Edited by J O S E DE O N I S .

(Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, Inc., 1976. Xxii + 232 p p . $15.00.) T h e Hispanic population of Colorado and m u c h of the Southwest claimed the area as a homeland for many years before the American Revolution. T h e fourteen essays contained in this book bring the history a n d contributions of the Hispano into a fresh perspective.

I folladay — Cottonwood: Places and Faces. Edited by S T E P H E N L. CARR. Holladay, U t . : Holladay-Cottonwood Heritage Committee, 1976. 104 p p . Paper,'$3.50.) A visually attractive area history, Holladay—Cottonwood defines an important p a r t of greater Salt Lake City by showing its transition from pioneer times to the present.

Homespun: Domestic Arts and Crafts of Mormon Pioneers. By S H I R L E Y B. P A X M A N . (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1976. Xii + 134 p p . $3.95.) An attractive illustrated guide to various textile arts, cooking, soap a n d candle manufacture, drying flowers and fruit, and toys a n d dolls.

America.

By the EDITORS O F C O U N T R Y B E A U T I -

FUL. (Waukesha, Wis.: Country Beautiful Corp., 1976. 208 p p . $25.00.) T h e text consists primarily of relevant quotations from well-known authors, explorers, Indians, and conservationists that increase the reader's appreciation of the mountain country as shown in ninety color photographs and many black and white.

John

Miur's America. By T . H . W A T Photographs by D E W T T T J O N E S . (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1976. 159 p p . $20.00.)

KINS.

This portrait of Muir's life a n d his vision of America is embellished with twenty original drawings by the explorer-naturalist a n d forty-eight beautiful photographs. Admirers of M u i r will definitely w a n t to a d d this largeformat biography to their collection.

104 The Mormon

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Quarterly

Way. By S T Y N E M . SLADE.

Season of the Elk. By D E A N K R A K E L I I .

Photographs by J A M E S A. W A R N E R . (Englewood Cliffs, N . J.: PrenticeHall, Inc., 1976. 173 p p . $25.00.)

(Kansas City, M o . : T h e Lowell Press, X + 117 p p . $14.95.)

This is a book of beautiful and sensitive photographs, in color, depicting Mormon themes. Mormons everywhere will want it for that reason alone. T h e text, however, has a tone of naive credulity that will annoy some. For example, Miss Slade asserts that Mormon women are very feminine creatures who have no interest in liberation, only in furthering their husbands' and families' goals. She further claims that Mormons have few, if any, members on federal welfare and have solved the complex problems of juvenile delinquency and prison reform. Curiously, the author, a Black woman, ignores the very real problem many faithful Mormons have with the church's official stand on Blacks in the priesthood. She merely notes that she as a Black felt comfortable being with Mormons as she worked on the book.

A year's observation of elk near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, led to this informative, well-illustrated book on the last great elk herds in America. Tracing Your Ancestry: A Step-by-Step Guide to Researching Your Family History.

By F. W I L B U R

HELMBOLD.

(Birmingham, Ala.: Oxmoor House, Inc., 1976. Viii + 210 pp. $9.95.) T h e author, a well-known genealogist and university librarian, leads researchers â&#x20AC;&#x201D; including novices â&#x20AC;&#x201D; through the maze of records from which family data can be abstracted. A separate paperback Logbook ($3.95) provides useful forms for recording and organizing data. Windsinger.

By GARY M. S M I T H . (San

Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1976. 175 pp. $7.95.) An engaging personal memoir of people, places, and life set in part in Utah's Robbers Roost and Canyonlands country.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY D e p a r t m e n t of D e v e l o p m e n t Services Division of State History BOARD O FSTATE HISTORY MILTON C ABRAMS, Smithfield, 1977

President

DELLO G. DAYTON, Ogden, 1979

Vice President MELVIN T. SMITH, Salt Lake City Secretary M R S . JUANITA BROOKS, St. George, 1977 THERON L U K E , Provo, 1979

DAVID S. MONSON, Secretary of State

Ex officio M R S . ELIZABETH MONTAGUE, Salt Lake City, 1979 M R S . MABEL J. OLIVER, Orem, 1980

MRS. HELEN Z. PAPANIKOLAS, Salt Lake City, 1977 HOWARD C. PRICE, JR., Price, 1979 M R S . ELIZABETH SKANCHY, Midvale, 1977 RICHARD O. ULIBARRI, Roy, 1977

ADMINISTRATION MELVIN T. SMITH, Director

STANFORD J. LAYTON, Publications Coordinator JAY M. HAYMOND, Librarian DAVID B. MADSEN, Antiquities Director

The Utah State Historical Society was organized in 1897 by public-spirited Utahns to collect, preserve, and publish Utah and related history. Today, under state sponsorship, the Society fulfills its obligations by publishing the Utah Historical Quarterly and other historical materials; locating, documenting, and preserving historic and prehistoric buildings and sites; and maintaining a specialized research library. Donations and gifts to the Society's programs or its library are encouraged, for only through such means can it live up to its responsibility of preserving the record of Utah's past.

MEMBERSHIP Membership in the Utah State Historical Society is open to all individuals and institutions interested in Utah history. Membership applications and change of address notices should be sent to the membership secretary. Annual dues are: Individual, $5.00; institution, $7.00; student, $3.00 (with teacher's statement) ; family, $6.00*; contributing, $15.00*; sustaining $25.00*; patron, $50.00* (*includes Beehive ' History); life member, $150.00. Your interest and support are most welcome.

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Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 45, Number 1, 1977

Articles inside

A Review of Mormon Settlement Literature

The Mormon Invasion of Russian America: Dynamics of a Potent Myth

The Gap in the Buchanan Revival: The Utah Expedition of 1857-58

Shonesburg: The Town Nobody Knows

William Henry Smart: Uinta Basin Pioneer Leader

The Making of Saints: The Mormon Town as a Setting for the Study of Cultural Change